8 ms·
Tex, because it's author didn't care to reuse XML. Having used it for publications and during the university i really, i despise Tex. Simply the language sucks
by jhnewhall 15y ago
Tex, because it's author didn't care to reuse XML.
Having used it for publications and during the university i really, i despise Tex. Simply the language sucks, the outcome is nice, but those slashes and parenthesis really sucked.
With a XML syntax we could easily create beautiful editors, make it easy to parse with schema validation, etc.
Problem is that this card castle grew, avoiding alternatives such as docbook, and is and will always be a mess, since it's foundations are not parseable.
- simon 15y agoDoesn't Tex pre-date XML? If so, that would make it hard, even for Donald Knuth, to reuse a non-existent technology.
- jhpriestley 15y agoAn XML-syntax language? Like XSLT? Yeah, that's thriving. The awesome editors and tools that are supposed to grow around any XML-based syntax (after the hard part -- parsing -- is taken care of), are like the modern version of the "sufficiently smart compiler".
- jff 15y agoXML: published 1996. TeX: Initially released 1978. Plus, writing XML makes me puke, so even with the occasional grossness of TeX syntax I'm happy it's not XML.
- adavies42 15y agoXML 1.0 is from 1998. more than twenty years after Knuth started TeX. Even SGML is only from 1986, I suppose he could've used GML....