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Aside from unfortunate aesthetic, and puzzling practical issues (like no attempt to replicate TeX's math support), something about the overall tone of the docs

by theoh 9y ago

Aside from unfortunate aesthetic, and puzzling practical issues (like no attempt to replicate TeX's math support), something about the overall tone of the docs and Cozens' web presence would discourage me from making an investment of time in one of his projects. YMMV. Jeffrey Kingston's Lout was a more convincing experiment but it's sadly no longer adequate for complex or multilingual work, due to limitations in the 90s implementation.

zem 9y ago
i was sad nonpareil never got done; it looked like it was going to be interesting, and lout was a great proof of ability.
SwellJoe 9y ago
"something about the overall tone of the docs and Cozens' web presence would discourage me from making an investment of time in one of his projects." I'm not sure I understand that assumption. He's been around the OSS community for decades (wrote some O'Reilly books about Perl, and wrote quite a few Perl modules, though that was more than a decade ago, and I dunno what he's been up to since). I do find the github a little sparse, but there is a website for SILE, which is better: http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ It looks like a personal project, rather than a "take over the world" attack on TeX. Seems like if it's an area that's interesting for someone, they might want to have a look. It does have some novel ideas over TeX, and is maybe more modern in some of its implementation details, even if it is nowhere near as complete or mature as LaTeX.
haberman 9y ago
Math support wasn't his personal priority. From the FAQ: "Does it support mathematics? Not yet. I understand that mathematics is important in scientific typesetting, but SILE is targeting a particular niche in the humanities. That said, it's not impossible, and it should not be difficult for someone to port MathJax from Javascript to Lua and implement mathematical typesetting as an add-on package." I don't see what is particularly puzzling about implementing the things that matter to you personally, and leaving other things to contributions. I especially don't see a problem with leaving things to add-on packages if it's possible to leave them out of the core. Papers with complex math in them are a pretty small percentage of the overall number of books/articles in the world. Also I like the aesthetic. YMMV.

by theoh 9y ago

zem 9y ago

i was sad nonpareil never got done; it looked like it was going to be interesting, and lout was a great proof of ability.

SwellJoe 9y ago

"something about the overall tone of the docs and Cozens' web presence would discourage me from making an investment of time in one of his projects." I'm not sure I understand that assumption. He's been around the OSS community for decades (wrote some O'Reilly books about Perl, and wrote quite a few Perl modules, though that was more than a decade ago, and I dunno what he's been up to since). I do find the github a little sparse, but there is a website for SILE, which is better: http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/ It looks like a personal project, rather than a "take over the world" attack on TeX. Seems like if it's an area that's interesting for someone, they might want to have a look. It does have some novel ideas over TeX, and is maybe more modern in some of its implementation details, even if it is nowhere near as complete or mature as LaTeX.

haberman 9y ago

Math support wasn't his personal priority. From the FAQ: "Does it support mathematics? Not yet. I understand that mathematics is important in scientific typesetting, but SILE is targeting a particular niche in the humanities. That said, it's not impossible, and it should not be difficult for someone to port MathJax from Javascript to Lua and implement mathematical typesetting as an add-on package." I don't see what is particularly puzzling about implementing the things that matter to you personally, and leaving other things to contributions. I especially don't see a problem with leaving things to add-on packages if it's possible to leave them out of the core. Papers with complex math in them are a pretty small percentage of the overall number of books/articles in the world. Also I like the aesthetic. YMMV.