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The article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX, in the same way that XML was used as a front-end to LaTeX. Very easy to do. > If S-e
by 11ren 18y ago
The article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX, in the same way that XML was used as a front-end to LaTeX. Very easy to do.
> If S-expressions were easier to edit, it would be most logical to edit the document in S-expressions and then write a small Scheme program to convert S-expressions into a formatting language like LaTeX. This is, what XML and SGML people have done for decades [...]
- anamax 18y ago> The article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX (1) As another comment points out, they have when doing so provided benefits. (2) Lispers tend to be multi-lingual; they'll use other languages when appropriate. If XMLers can only work in XML.... >This is, what XML and SGML people have done for decades Decades? 20 years/two decades ago is 1988. The first draft of XML is roughly 1998/10 years later/one decade ago. GML, a predecessor to SGML, didn't become public until 73 but the "multiple use" stuff was still in the future. SGML rode the WWW wave, but that didn't happen for technical reasons.
- gruseom 18y agoThe article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX How does he know they didn't?
- anamax 18y agoNote that such front-ends are inherently leaky. If all they do is transform syntax, they're probably a bad idea. Note that the point of using s-expressions as a front-end would be programmatic generation, not by-human editing. (Neither sexpressions nor xml is actually all that friendly for editing text.) Do XML folks really think write front-ends for ease of editing?
- eru 18y agoS-Expressions are OK to work with as a human if you have a decent editor that helps you indent and balance parens.