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

[kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann)]

Mac <oonplnhd02@sneakemail.com> writes:

> 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.

I think the main advantage of using XML is that it is
machine-processable.  And the advantage of LaTeX is that it can
produce good-looking output easily.

There are ways to produce, say, HTML from LaTeX, but they are
inherently fragile and difficult to get right.  Or RTF, or whatever.
I guess that would be easier with XML.

But on the other hand, LaTeX has really great support for typography,
and I doubt that there is an XML processor that allows you to specify
whether a "." character is part of an abbreviation or the end of a
sentence.  (In English, end-of-sentence spacing differs from
inter-word spacing.)  In LaTeX this is quite easy.

Does this help?
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