[Discuss] TeX Resources?

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-07-19 17:21-0700 Adam Parkin wrote:

> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> TeX is probably too low level for your needs so go with LaTeX (which is 
>
> I actually meant both, I've been playing with LaTeX so far so that's really 
> what I had in mind.
>
>> DocBook front-end to LaTeX itself.  For example, if you write your 
>> document in
>> DocBook, you can generate all kinds of document formats (including LaTeX 
>> .....
>
> Thanks for the tip about DocBook, as I had only roughly heard of it. Having 
> done a bit of GooFu and reading up on it though I have concerns that DocBook 
> is a bit too high level.  In particular, it seems to me that DocBook isn't as 
> suited for mathematical formulae, which is something I do need.  Please 
> correct me if I'm wrong though.

Good question.  I don't have any practical experience with it yet, but I
believe DocBook+MathML is the answer to your question. Debian, for example,
has a package called docbook-mathml which is described at
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/docbook-mathml.

>
> As well, there is a much greater volume of documentation on LaTeX than on 
> DocBook (or so it would seem in my rough search for tutorials & the like). 
> There's the "Definitive Guide to DocBook" (which seemed like more of a 
> reference than a tutorial), but aside from that I didn't find much.
>
> Most of the praise I've been reading about DocBook seems to be of the "well 
> it's XML so if you have a background in HTML it'll be really easy to read & 
> write compared to LaTeX", which is fair to a degree (LaTeX *is* ugly), but I 
> don't see DocBook being easier to learn *for myself* than LaTeX would be, and 
> if I go the LaTeX route I have more resources to fall back upon (both in 
> terms of documentation, and friends in the CS department who have familiarity 
> with LaTeX but not DocBook).  It seems to me at any rate, both systems are 
> easy to learn for anyone with a "tech" background, with DocBook being 
> somewhat easier to read.
>
> Having said all that, I am a bit intrigued by the ideas behind DocBook, and 
> will be throwing it into my list of technologies I "should" check out at some 
> point. =8->

I agree with your points.  DocBook is more cutting edge than LaTeX with all
the risk/reward that entails.  The XML nature of DocBook+MathML means it is
easy to parse given a schema.  So for example, emacs has the nxml mode which
has already been set up for the DocBook schema (see
http://www.thaiopensource.com/nxml-mode/), but it sounds like it would not
be that difficult to set up the nxml mode of emacs for other schemas such as
DocBook+MathML.

I do work with XML languages from time to time. For example, I designed a
schema for the data that Barbara has been collecting on KDE-related events
which allows easy input and validation of that data and output in a number
of useful formats such as xhtml.  I also automated generation of Atom (yet
another XML schema) feed data for whenever Barbara updates the LoLL website.
Finally, the PLplot documentation is written in DocBook.

In contrast, LaTeX is an old, mature, well-documented (but non-XML),
alternative to DocBook. I got started with LaTeX years ago, and that is why
I am still using it for writing my scientific papers, but at some point I
may switch over that effort to DocBook+MathML because of my other
XML-related interests.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________