Re: [Groff] Typesetting Markup Language (TML) - a Superset of Groff

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:
 |> The project on github: https://github.com/cloutiy/tml
 |> Extensive documentation on its wiki: https://github.com/cloutiy/tml/wiki
 |
 |Interesting, and I'll look more when I've time.
 |
 |> Inline formatting has a nice clean syntax that resembles HTML, but
 |> much cleaner - you just need 1 closing tag.
 |...
 |> Here is some <b<bold text>.
 |> Here is some <i<italic text>.
 |> Here is some <smallcaps<small cap text>.
 |...
 |> Here is <bold, size +2<bold and larger text>
 |
 |I struggle to read the <b<bold text> syntax though, and I suspect enough
 |non-programmers have been exposed to HTML-like syntax in forum software,
 |etc., that they to are used to <> balancing.  Editors may also provide
 |"matching bracket" functionality for <>, as with [], etc.  Were syntaxes
 |like
 |
 |    Here is some <b:bold text>.
 |    Here is some <i:italic text>.
 |    Here is some <smallcaps:small cap text>.
 |    Here is <bold, size +2:bold and larger text>
 |
 |considered, with the first colon marking the separation?
 |
 |    <b:Bold and <i:bold-italic>> text.

Or plain SGML that i think could use <tagname/almost any text you
like/.  I think plain SGML is still an interesting language, much
better than what XML made of it.  And then i, for one, don't want
yet another so-called plain text markup language.  There is rst,
asciidoc, markdown, whatever, a bit more taggy is perl's POD and
many more.  I think pimping one of those as a base is more likely
to be useful.  I had a time when i liked rst, but pimping POD is
possibly nicer given how rst looks if you start real work with
progamming stuff etc.  And then a nicely reduced ROFF (TeX, too)
set of macros does look very clean!  If it only could act as
a base for other document formats...

Ciao, and have a nice weekend!

--steffen