RE: [Axiom-developer] website <-> latex

[Bill Page]

On Wednesday, June 02, 2004 6:27 AM 
address@hidden wrote:
> 
> > Well, I know where you are coming from, but I seriously 
> > doubt that you will be able to convince the current
> > generation of web users of that!
> 
> I think it would be more adapted to consider only the current 
> generation of scientists, rather than web users (most won't
> care about Axiom, I suppose?). And I can assure you, from my
> experience and the experience of colleagues, that it is very
> easy to have students in science learn TeX in a few days, and
> write their reports in TeX. Not more easy, not less easy to
> learn than any other computer language like Fortran or C, and
> certainly much simpler to learn than Quantum Field Theory or
> C* algebras :-)

Yes I agree with you. But I work for a large scientific
research organization (about 200 research scientists, some in
engineering, math and physics, others in "softer sciences").
Recently I have had to deal specifically and almost everyday
with the issue of LaTeX versus WORD. Perhaps 50% of our authors
are still "die-hard" LaTeX users who would also share your
views. The other 50% (and probably increasing) now use WORD -
in spite of all of the problems that it causes. In fact, the
use of WORD is a de facto organization standard as set by
corporate office users who know very little about preparing
scientific documents and for the most part do not even use
WORD very well. I don't think this trend is unique to our
organization.

Still, I promote and defend LaTeX when ever I can. When
I can't do that, I promote OpenOffice. But you might be
quite surprised how hard it is to "sell" something that
is free, even when it is clearly better.

> 
> > The move is still very strongly away from traditional
> > LaTeX and towards XML-based extensions of HTML such as 
> > MATHML.
> 
> Well, XML is driven by the Microsoft mammoth and a few 
> others, and I agree that, in theory, it would be very
> attractive to merge portions of XML documents generated
> by Word with portions of documents generated by other
> software such as LaTeX, Amaya, Lyx, TeXmacs, etc.
>

XML is a W3C standard. What Microsoft does with it is,
in my opinion, largely irrelevant. The XML format used
by WORD is not very useful - still it is somewhat better
than an undisclosed completely proprietary format. I think
OpenOffice generates much better XML.

But really it is incorrect to refer to "XML documents". XML
is not a document format. It is a semantic neutral generic
mark-up language. It is the namespace and other semantics that
one must add to XML in any given application that determine
the actual "document" content.
 
> However, in practice, my experience with the much simpler 
> example of just trying to import, into Word, HTML documents
> issued from other software, is that one usually obtains error
> messages saying approximately "The document you are trying
> to import contains errors, correct them and try later";
> even if it is a perfectly correct html document, that you
> displayed with Internet Explorer or Mozilla a few minutes
> before,

Just because an HTML document displays properly in some
browser (Explorer, Mozilla or any other, any given version,
etc.) does not mean that it is "correct" HTML. For that
you need an HTML validator program (see W3C website). But
trying to creating or importing HTML to/from WORD is not
something I would ever try to do except perhaps as a last
resort. HTML is a "presentation" format. WORD wants an
editable format as input. WORD creates rather poor and
idiosyncratic HTML as output. (OpenOffice creates much
better HTML.) You would have similar (or worse) problems
trying to import postscript or PDF format into WORD (or
other word processor).

> so that it's clear the bugs come from Word, not from the
> html document.

WORD certainly has bugs, but I don't see how you can
conclude this from what you apparently are asking it
to do.

> 
> As for importing / exporting XML documents to exchange 
> documents between various software, it seems to me
> reasonable to fear that bugged software (such as Word,
> but not only) can create bugged XML documents, and thus
> bugged formulas, so that for ex. a formula that is correctly 
> displayed with Word version N could be displayed incorrectly
> with another version of Word, or some other editor or
> display software (Amaya or other).

Yes, I agree. There are many examples of this. But it has
nothing to do with XML as such.

> So, my reaction to your remark "The move is still very
> strongly away from traditional LaTeX and towards 
> XML-based extensions" would be that, if your remark is true, 
> then it is a very strong argument to completely avoid XML,
> if one wants to privilege rigor in math documents and in
> Axiom :-)

I don't see what this has to do with XML?

> Just look at Basic and what it became in the hands of
> Microsoft : I have a personal theorem that asserts 
> that any program written in MS Basic (i.e. using MS
> extensions) is bound to fail with any succeeding version
> of MS Basic one or two years later...
>

You are right. However I have a similar experience with
Java, Perl, Maple, and even Axiom. So I think that you
are simply protesting too much about Microsoft. Forget
about Microsoft as such, and support free and open source
software.
 
> Furthermore, I still don't see the advantages, for
> mathematicians, of Mathml/Xml over TeX, it seems to me
> nothing else than a (still) unachieved and very verbose
> way of trying to do the same, with the considerable
> disadvantage IMHO of making math formulas completely
> unreadable by humans, so that we are forced to read them
> through software, which are inevitably buggy, and so might 
> represent incorrectly the formulae etc etc. (goto previous 
> paragraph !).

I agree with what you say about the readability of MATHML
but it is not correct to think of it as "trying to do the
same" as TeX. As Bob McElrath wrote:

> MathML is not writable or readable by humans.  Therefore
> it will always be an intermediate format, and *only* an
> intermediate format.  One must use other tools to create it.
> The appropriate tool for the foreseeable future is LaTeX.

I agree with this and am not trying to argue against it.
LaTeX is still a very reasonable way to create typeset
quality mathematics. But the goals of MATHML are quite
different. It is a standard language which a web browser
is expected to be able to parse and render just like it
renders other HTML and even vector graphics formats etc.
Yes, it could have been LaTeX instead of an XML-based
standard, in fact LaTeX even had most (all?) of the
formatting and hypertext extensions available when HTML
was invented for the Web. But as it turns out, standards
are one thing and "best practices" are another. Most people
think that the web and HTML succeeded where earlier tools
like LaTeX and SGML failed simply because of the sudden
acceptance of this coding as a "standard". Usually it is
just a matter of timing and politics.

Perhaps it is a mistake to think that W3C and related
international organizations can repeat this with more
complex text like mathematics.


> TeX has been created by a mathematician for mathematicians,
> and a TeX formula is very similar to the way one would read
> a formula to a colleague by telephone (cf. "history of TeX"
> on TUG site), so it's easy for a human to read it from 
> its TeX source, not from its mathml source : one line of TeX 
> is roughly one page of Mathml.

I really don't see much advantage of reading formula by
telephone ... although I admit that I often use a simplified
LaTeX coding in emails to colleagues.

But the point is that it takes a computer with a LaTeX
package installed to properly render mathematics from LaTeX
and it takes a MATHML capable browser to render MATHML. If or
when people have MATHML capable browsers open and ready on
their desk tops, they might expect to display mathematical
text without any additional programs. Right now we do that
by resorting to a much less efficient graphic format such
as png, gif or jpeg (which of course none are in any kind
of "human" readable format).

> 
> The experience of TechExplorer is IMHO a good example of
> what can happen when trying to follow fashion driven by
> commercial products and stick to them : it could display
> directly some LaTeX documents into the first versions of
> Internet Explorer, but it ultimately failed, in part (if
> I understood well) because of modifications from Internet
> Explorer 5 to 6. Just replace LaTeX with Mathml, and imagine
> what could happen.

That is already happening. I think TechExplorer is still
a commercial product of IBM, right?

> 
> To summarize, I think that, for Open Source mathematical 
> software,  we ought to privilege rigorous developments,
> rather than vigorous developments. I vote for Tim's approach,
> considering TeX documents as source, and html as dead-end, 
> write-only format ; and I propose to consider Xml and Mathml 
> on the same footing as html, because Xml/Mathml documents
> can be created from TeX source by TeX4ht, and because this
> prevents Axiom from becoming dependent of future evolution
> of Xml/Mathml and commercial software, so that it continues
> to be built on a zero-bug, rock-solid basis.

I also agree with you, Tim and Bob about the choice of
LaTeX (or more specifically Tim's noweb extensions of it)
as a practical source format. However I do not agree with
your opinions about XML or that HTML and MATHML are
"dead-ends". To me they are simply "a means to an end".

> 
> Best wishes,
> Michel

Thank you very much for your comments.

Regards,
Bill Page.