Semantic TeX

[Mike Marchywka]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 05:44:04PM +0100, Philip Taylor wrote:
>    William F Hammond via texhax wrote:
> 
> Aaron Gray [mailto:aaronngray.lists at gmail.com]<aaronngray.lists at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> 
> Should be titled "Towards a Semantic TeX" maybe.
> 
> Isn't LaTeX already partly semantic?
> 
>    It can be, if the user elects to use semantic markup.  Unfortunately, because of its design, it is quite possible to write
>    a valid LaTeX document that gives absolutely no clue whatsoever as to the implied semantics.  Far better, in my experience,
>    to express the document semantics in XML and then write a TeX processor that can handle the chosen XML subset and directly
>    typeset the document from the XML source.  See, for example,
>    [https://www.eutypon.gr/eutypon/pdf/e2013-31/e31-a02.pdf]Cataloguing the Greek manuscripts of the Lambeth Palace Library:
>    An exercise in transforming Excel into PDF via XML using (Plain) XƎTEX.
>    Philip Taylor


In the past, I've been looking at TeX v XML in terms of user readability
of the source code particularly for email and letters 
( and of course the "BomTeX" for turning a bibliography
into a bill of materials for both practical reasons for people acting on the 
document content and possible commercial interests for authors when
readers convert to customers ). I'll confess to liking a preview
mode for math- it can be hard to read an equation in latex source
but in many cases the TeX source code plays nicer with other existing
linux text utilities. I'm not sure people do that often, I find converting
pdf to text is common but drops all the nice structure, but tha
is my largest interst.   

I like latex format so much in it simple form I used
it for a raw data file without any real regrets. 
Right now I've got years worth of dog diet entries in a latex table
that I'm exporting to a txt file but expect to exchange via email
( ultimately I want to enter diary entries such as diet and
health outcomes via email - I've hacked up neomutt for monitoring
an IMAP account and rewriting the diet entry parse now . I'm 
looking for a role eventually for a latex format email but
right now this is nice as plain text. ) 

\sincerely{ me }


-- 

mike marchywka
306 charles cox
canton GA 30115
USA, Earth 
marchywka at hotmail.com
404-788-1216
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