[Axiom-developer] Re: latex and noweb

[Ralf Hemmecke]

On 05/05/2007 04:00 AM, Bill Page wrote:
> On May 4, 2007 1:24 PM Tim Daly wrote:
>
> > I wasn't suggesting that the domain and functions be only
> > implemented in spad. I was suggesting that the interface be
> > well specified so it could be implemented in a compatible
> > way in lisp/spad/aldor/perl/whatever. That would mean that
> > the access and algorithms would be independent of the
> > machinery. Which means we can think and debate at a much 
> > higher level.
>
> Yes I agree with that approach. However since this is Axiom we
> are talking about it makes good sense to me to use Axiom/Spad
> concept of "domain" as the underlying model - a domain being
> a collection of objects of the same type with a common set of
> methods (interface). Whether this is implemented in Spad, Aldor,
> Lisp, Boot or some other language for reasons of efficiency or
> convenience is of lesser importance.

Oh, I like that. I just somehow fear that the current input does not 
have enough structure. LaTeX code comes with too few tags. For example, 
we write

\section{...}

instead of

\begin{section}{...}

\end{section}

Maybe these are little details, but eventually we must think about a 
more structured input format.

> With respect to possible implementations of an HTML Document
> Object Model in Axiom,

[snip] ...

Maybe, also tex4ht helps a lot to produce reasonable XHTML+MathML out of 
a latex document.

> Now, extending that to something a little more ambitious -
> a document model for literate programs also seems like a
> reasonable goal.

Yes. Would it be so hard to define a XML schema for literate programs? 
(I have no idea.)

Anyway, most of us don't want to edit XML, but rather LaTeX, so what 
exacly should become the input format? XML has more structure, LaTex is 
a bit more common for us. We surely want to restrict a bit. For example, 
removing all stuff outside \begin{document}...\end{document} to make 
pamphlets combinable.

Ralf