Not off-topic: Wrong couple divorced after computer error by law firm Vardag's

[William F Hammond]

Paulo --

You write to Kaveh:

> Letś start by looking at the inter-word spacing in the
> Abstract:
>
> Screenshot from 2024-04-25 22-00-03.png

I think you are painting with too broad a bush in
characterizing the typesetting that arises with XML.  There
are different XML languages and many ways of processing each
of them.

For example, if I begin with that paragraph under my Latex
profile, spin it to XML, and translate that to Latex, the
result will be the standard Latex handling of that
paragraph.

As for your math examples, if in my profiled Latex I
write:

     \item
       \[ K(x) = \tilde{K}\bal{\absval{x}} \]
     \item
       \[ K(-\tilde{x})\bal{\sqrt{1 - {\absval{x}}^2}} \]
     \item
       \[ K\bal{\sqrt{\delta_E(x)^2 + s^2}} \]

the XML will be:

<item><itembody>
<displaymath>K(x)<eqs/><tilde>K</tilde><bal><absval>x</absval></bal></displaymath>
</itembody></item>
<item><itembody><displaymath>
K(<hyp/><tilde>x</tilde>)<bal><sqrt>1<hyp/><lgg><absval>x</absval>
  </lgg><sup>2</sup></sqrt></bal>
</displaymath></itembody></item>
<item><itembody><displaymath>
K<bal><sqrt><delta/><sub>E</sub>(x)<sup>2</sup>
  <plu/>s<sup>2</sup></sqrt></bal>
</displaymath></itembody></item>

and it will become this regular Latex:

\item  \[ K(x) \ = \  \tilde{K}\left(\left|x\right|\right) \] 
\item  \[ K(-\tilde{x})\left(\sqrt{1 - {\left|x\right|}^{2}}\right) \] 
\item  \[ K\left(\sqrt{\delta{}_{E}(x)^{2} + s^{2}}\right) \] 

There are things to quibble about.  For example the math
accent tilde on the K might be seen as too small in the PDF
(but maybe too large in the MathJax rendition of the HTML
output).  The profile has only one tilde math accent.  If
one wants author-level distinctions they could be brought up
either by adding other tilde commands or by providing
options to the present tilde command.  It's still under the
XML model.

And you write:

> Of course a lot of what is good and bad in typography is a
> matter of taste and discussion. But no matter what measure
> you come up with -- be it the badness index of Knuth--Plass
> or a wider distribution of inter-word spacing .. or any
> other one, we could probably use it to show that XML is the
> source of large amounts of bad typography in the world right
> now.

At the very least you might want to think about flagging
which XML languages are responsible for the bad typography.
Beyond the language there's also the question of what
processing has been done.  I suppose flagging a journal that
uses some form of XML more or less flags an XML document
type and the publisher's standard processing for it.

Just because much may be bad does not mean that all is bad.

        -- Bill



Email: hmwlfsr at yahoo.com
       gellmu at gmail.com
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http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/


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