4 ms·

The problem with LaTeX is that it still mixes content and styling. For example, when I've got a final answer I have a macro that I've named "fa", which will in

The problem with LaTeX is that it still mixes content and styling. For example, when I've got a final answer I have a macro that I've named "fa", which will insert double underline. This is an attempt on my part to give semantic meaning to the final answer. However, since that macro is mine and not standard it doesn't help much in the grander scheme of things. LaTeX should have had an absolute separation of style and content.

revelation 9y ago
Yes, this worked so great on the web /s I read this complaint on the old thread and I think we had 3.. 4 of those "semantic web" standards by now? But here we are, everything is a bunch of divs and extracting meaning from web sites is a task for deep learning neural networks.
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  Well, at least in math there's a somewhat formal notation for most things at this point? Obviously, mathematicians don't all agree on the precise notation, but there's generalizable ideas like "grouping symbols" (parens, brackets) and "left-grouping symbols" (upper-sigma, upper-pi), etc. etc. that inform the layout? Am I hopelessly misinformed on this? This kind of thing should suffice for 95%+ of things, and if you are an exception then you get to play in "lay it out yourself" land. One issue that I had with LaTeX formulas was exactly the thing that parent poster was pointing out: You really had to describe the layout of the formula; not just its expression ("... and have at it, layout engine"). It is/was really just a kludge around the box model of TeX in the worst possible way. Yes, you could produce the most beautiful formulas of them all, but that's just because you spent a huge amount of time learning (La)TeX and tweaking the exact expression of each individual formula[1]. Don't get me wrong, it's was still miles better than the competition at the time if you cared about the quality of the output -- not to mention the severe resource constrains -- but surely we can do better these days? Surely?!? Btw, I don't think parent poster was talking "semantic web" at all, as I read it at least. [1] Same deal with pseudocode. Oh god, the amount of time I spent tweaking pseodocode in my university years.
  - unkown-unknowns 9y ago
    > Btw, I don't think parent poster was talking "semantic web" at all, as I read it at least. Correct.

revelation 9y ago

Yes, this worked so great on the web /s I read this complaint on the old thread and I think we had 3.. 4 of those "semantic web" standards by now? But here we are, everything is a bunch of divs and extracting meaning from web sites is a task for deep learning neural networks.

lomnakkus 9y ago
Well, at least in math there's a somewhat formal notation for most things at this point? Obviously, mathematicians don't all agree on the precise notation, but there's generalizable ideas like "grouping symbols" (parens, brackets) and "left-grouping symbols" (upper-sigma, upper-pi), etc. etc. that inform the layout? Am I hopelessly misinformed on this? This kind of thing should suffice for 95%+ of things, and if you are an exception then you get to play in "lay it out yourself" land. One issue that I had with LaTeX formulas was exactly the thing that parent poster was pointing out: You really had to describe the layout of the formula; not just its expression ("... and have at it, layout engine"). It is/was really just a kludge around the box model of TeX in the worst possible way. Yes, you could produce the most beautiful formulas of them all, but that's just because you spent a huge amount of time learning (La)TeX and tweaking the exact expression of each individual formula[1]. Don't get me wrong, it's was still miles better than the competition at the time if you cared about the quality of the output -- not to mention the severe resource constrains -- but surely we can do better these days? Surely?!? Btw, I don't think parent poster was talking "semantic web" at all, as I read it at least. [1] Same deal with pseudocode. Oh god, the amount of time I spent tweaking pseodocode in my university years.
- unkown-unknowns 9y ago
  > Btw, I don't think parent poster was talking "semantic web" at all, as I read it at least. Correct.