Re: Off-topic: Plain text, XML or LaTex?

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, oonplnhd02@sneakemail.com wrote:
> I like plain text, and have for a long time used outline-mode to
> write both my own private notes as well as draft documents. I have
> also for a long time been thinking about moving to LaTex so that I
> also can produce my final documents in Emacs as well.
> 
> Now I have an opportunity to move to XML instead. So I would
> appreciate your thoughts about this.
> 
> How can I get up-to speed with writing XML inside Emacs? Is it worth
> it, or should I stick with plain-ol-text? Any pointers to tutorials,
> books etc is appreciated.
> 
> Perhaps you have a completely different setup that you are willing
> to share with me?
> 
> One reason for liking plain text is it's portability (but so are eg
> .pdf these days). Another is version control, I'm a heavy user of
> cvs (pcl-cvs is *great*).

I like plain text too.  Generally I write a converter from my text
format to the desired format, using hand-coded parsing and templates.

Texinfo is actually very nice.  You can embed Latex commands in it, I
believe, and for technical documentation it is great.  The Emacs
texinfo-mode is very good.  Also, Texinfo needs minimal markup, most
of it is plain text you write.

I have used XML with various setups, and the XAE (a package that
glues several others together) is my favorite.  I wouldn't use
XML over plain text and Texinfo.

Ted