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

[Dmitri.Minaev@britishcouncil.ru]

Hello, Mac,

I'd say that it all depends on whether you can afford spending some time
tuning the XML tools to your needs. If yes, XML may be usable. Emacs is good
in editing XML (just as good as it is in editing anything else :) , there
are some XSL processors (like xsltproc) and XSL:FO formatters (PassiveTeX or
Apache FOP) of acceptable quality.

Anyway, you'll have either to choose some established standard (TEI or
DocBook) or to write your own XSL transformation from your own DTD to
XSL:FO, which means more time spent on tweaking the xsl files and writing
shell scripts.

The good side of XML is, of course, in XSL. The bad one is that it's still
far from being a ripe standard and some time will pass before, e.g.,
FO-formatters will fully comply with the current standard of XSL:FO.

See "XML, a new start for the Web"
(http://tex.loria.fr/xml-etc/goossens-xml2000.pdf) by M.Goossens and
"PassiveTeX: from XML to PDF"
(http://home.cern.ch/goossens/goossensrahtz.ps.gz) by M.Goossens and
S.Rahtz.

PS: Me, I prefer plain text on paper ;) I don't trust computers, you can
never know with 'em...

--
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mac [mailto:oonplnhd02@sneakemail.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 4:22 PM
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Off-topic: Plain text, XML or LaTex?
> 
> 
> 
> I apologize for this off-topic posting. But I really like to know how
> you fellow Emacsien feal about his.
> 
> 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?
> 
> /mac
> 
> 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*).
> 
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