Re: [O] Leslie Lamport has a foot in the 21st century

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2016-10-11, at 16:56, Hubert Chathi <address@hidden> wrote:

> I don't know much about LaTeX3, but it looks like it's still targeting
> print, and so it would have the same problems.  Not only that, but the
> existing LaTeX-to-HTML tools might not work with LaTeX3, so if you're
> getting rid of half of your toolset, why switch to LaTeX3 instead of
> some other format that targets HTML more directly?
>
> I'm sure that there may be good reasons for sticking with LaTeX
> (e.g. being able to easily copy-and-paste into for-print articles,
> familiarity with the language, etc.), but there are also disadvantages,
> and it will be interesting to see what factors determine what type of
> system, whether it be LaTeX or something closer to HTML, ends up being
> used to write hierarchical proofs.
>
> I suspect that it will be a long time before hierarchical proofs gain
> much popularity though, given that Lamport has been talking about them
> since at least the 90's, and I haven't seen one "in the wild" yet.  So I
> don't know how much of a factor it will be "killing" LaTeX, if LaTeX
> ever does get killed.

Well, one might think that after about 20 years, LaTeX 2.09 should be
already dead.  It's not.  Academia has a lot of inertia.  So we're
probably stuck with LaTeX2e (for better or for worse) for at least
several decades.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski