wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[David Combs]

I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
of ascii math-notation.  What is it?  

(What is math-ML?  Is that it?)

Anyway, sure looks not fun to enter it by hand -- is there an
emacs .el-file that makes it all simple?

Likewise, no fun trying to *read* the stuff.  Emacs have a way
to make it look pretty?

Heck, and a way to produce .ps or .pdf from it?


(Thus far Google has found me nothing on this subject,
at least not via emacs.)


Thanks!


David

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Xah Lee]

On Nov 27, 5:34 pm, dkco...@panix.com (David Combs) wrote:
> I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
> of ascii math-notation.  What is it?

it'd be nice if you give a example.

Is it something like the following?

<math>{a\over a^2+b^2}+ \left( {-b\over a^2+b^2}\right)i.</math>

the <math> is just their own custom tag. The meat inside is TeX or
LaTeX. You can read up in Wikipedia there.

I'm sure there are tens of articles explaining how or what about the
math typesetting used in Wikipedia.

> (What is math-ML?  Is that it?)

no it's not MathML. You can read in Wikipedia about MathML.

> Anyway, sure looks not fun to enter it by hand -- is there an
> emacs .el-file that makes it all simple?

as far as i know there's some elisp package that let you edit
Wikipedia from emacs and upload it without using the web browser
interface. (search emacswiki.org for it) But i'm afraid the math
markup is not pretty printed in anyway.

there are of course LaTeX modes builtin to let you edit such source
file, but not with Wikipedia's light markup mixed.

i don't think there's anything that would let you edit Wikipedia's
markup in some wysiwyg way.

if you want to convert Wikipedia articles as viewed in browser into
pdf, you can do that in few ways. If you are using FireFox, you can
use a add-on that screenshot the whole page as pdf. Search for “Pearl
Crescent Page Saver Basic” or “Screen grab!”.

If you are on mac os x, you can simply Print and choose pdf as output.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[djcb]

Hi David,

On Thu, 27 Nov 2008, David Combs wrote:

> I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
> of ascii math-notation.  What is it?  
> 
> (What is math-ML?  Is that it?)
> 
> Anyway, sure looks not fun to enter it by hand -- is there an
> emacs .el-file that makes it all simple?

Lucky you! I just released texdrive:
http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/texdrive

It's an emacs minor mode that let's you enter formulae in TeX-notation,
and it will generate PNGs from them.

This is similar to Wikipedia and some other wikis do.

Best wishes,
Dirk.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Dirk-Jan C. Binnema             <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>
             http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/ 
PGP: D09C E664 897D 7D39 5047 A178 E96A C7A1 017D DA3C
------------------------------------------------------

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Sven Utcke]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
> of ascii math-notation.  What is it?  

Could you give an example?

> Likewise, no fun trying to *read* the stuff.  Emacs have a way
> to make it look pretty?

Well, if it is something which has been around for a while, calc could
do it --- something like converting between:

(1 + x) / sqrt(x)

{(1 + x) / \sqrt{x}}

\frac{1 + x}{\sqrt{x}}

    1 + x
    -----
     ___
    V x

and so on.  Which, of course, is still pretty ugly...

Does this help?

Sven

PS: Installing calc on modern Emacsen requires a simple patch which
    can be found somewhere hidden in the Emacs documentation...
-- 
  ___ _  _____ ___   Dr.-Ing. Sven Utcke                    ___  ___ _____   __
 / __| |/ / __| __|  phone: +49 40 899-8-5317              |   \| __/ __\ \ / /
| (_ | ' <\__ \__ \  fax  : +49 40 899-4-5317              | |) | _|\__ \\ V / 
 \___|_|\_\___|___/  http://www.desy.de/~utcke    (to come)|___/|___|___/ |_|

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 01.12.2008 um 12:31 schrieb Sven Utcke:

> PS: Installing calc on modern Emacsen requires a simple patch which
>     can be found somewhere hidden in the Emacs documentation...

Is there another calc than that integrated into modern Emacsen?

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

Banken sprengen heißt Sonne rein lassen.

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:31:23 +0100 Sven Utcke wrote:

> dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:
>
>> I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
>> of ascii math-notation.  What is it?

It's called TeX.  Probably the best type setting software out there.

AUCTeX + preview LaTeX is an awesome Emacs mode to edit (La)TeX
Documents w/ some WYSIWYG features.

There is also some integration of AUCTeX / preview LaTeX into org-mode.
This may make it possible to send short snippets to a TeX process from a
plain text file w/o.  But I haven't tried that. But org-mode comes with
a good manual.

Of course you have to install (La)TeX before you can use it.  On
GNU/Linux this shouldn't be to hard.  I don't think there is any
distribution that has not packaged it.

David

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Jay Belanger]

Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE> writes:
...
> Is there another calc than that integrated into modern Emacsen?

It's the same Calc.  Before GNU Emacs 22.1, Calc 2.02f required a patch
to install.  Since then, Calc has been part of Emacs.

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Xah Lee]

On Dec 1, 6:08 am, David Hansen <david.han...@gmx.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:31:23 +0100 Sven Utcke wrote:
>
> > dkco...@panix.com (David Combs) writes:
>
> >> I see this stuff in math articles in wikipedia -- uses some kind
> >> of ascii math-notation.  What is it?
>
> It's called TeX.  Probably the best type setting software out there.

that's one of the myth among open source tech geekers.

TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
professionals.

When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
Mathematica is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX. Mathematica is a
order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3) and you can
have it automatically simplify the expression or computer numerical
values). Having a math typesetting system that also has semantic
meaning is part of the expressed goal of MathML (which started after
Mathematica had such a system is heavily influened by Wolfram
Research). However, so far MathML never caught up.

See:

• The TeX Pestilence
  http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/TeX_pestilence.html

In the domain of publishing, there's Framemaker and QuarkXPress, long
been the top professional tool since early 1990s. (i haven't used them
though) I do not know whether TeX has even have a good percentage of
market share among professionals typesetters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framemaker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Paul R]

Xah> Mathematica is a order of magnitude better because its typesetting
Xah> system not only passively show math formulas as a pretty printing
Xah> system, but the markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for
Xah> example, when you type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is
Xah> x^(2/3) and you can have it automatically simplify the expression
Xah> or computer numerical values).

Are we really talking about a typesetting system here ? I would not say
MS Paint is an order of magnitude better than emacs because you can draw
with pixel while in emacs you still have to draw in old ascii art.

Maxima, for exemple, being a symbolic expressions processor, will let
you work with symbolic expressions and provide export to latex formulas.
I have been using happily mixed session of auctex and maxima in the past
for scientific presentations. I guess imaxima has improved a lot since
and can provide most of what you will need nowaday. 

-- 
  Paul

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Xah Lee]

On Dec 1, 1:43 pm, Paul R <paul.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Xah> Mathematica is a order of magnitude better because its typesetting
> Xah> system not only passively show math formulas as a pretty printing
> Xah> system, but the markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for
> Xah> example, when you type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is
> Xah> x^(2/3) and you can have it automatically simplify the expression
> Xah> or computer numerical values).
>
> Are we really talking about a typesetting system here ?

Mathematica doing mathematical typesetting is news in the industry in
about 1997. For practical comprehensive overview of typesetting as a
field, see Wikipedia.

You can see some examples of latest features added to its typesetting
system here:
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/newin7/content/EnhancedTypesettingAutomation/

for the programers here who likes to compare Mathematica as a
programing lang, see:
http://wolfram.com/products/mathematica/analysis/

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Timothy Murphy]

Xah Lee wrote:

> Mathematica is a
> order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
> passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
> markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
> type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3) 

Hope this isn't so ...

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Phil Carmody]

Timothy Murphy <tim@maths.tcd.ie> writes:
> Xah Lee wrote:
>> Mathematica is a
>> order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
>> passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
>> markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
>> type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3) 
>
> Hope this isn't so ...

I suspect of all the reasons to prefer Pari/GP:

$ gp -q
? printtex(x^2/x^3)
\frac{1}{x}

over Mathematica, that this isn't one of them. It's a reason
to prefer Xah in ones killfile, though.

Phil
-- 
I tried the Vista speech recognition by running the tutorial. I was 
amazed, it was awesome, recognised every word I said. Then I said the 
wrong word ... and it typed the right one. It was actually just 
detecting a sound and printing the expected word! -- pbhj on /.

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Robin Fairbairns]

 Timothy Murphy <tim@maths.tcd.ie> writes:
>Xah Lee wrote:
>> Mathematica is a
>> order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
>> passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
>> markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
>> type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3) 
>
>Hope this isn't so ...

xah lee is obviously an *expert*.  perhaps he knows mathematics that
fuddy-duddies like you and me were never taught way back when...

oddly, i didn't register what twaddle it was, first time around ;-)
-- 
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge

Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Xah!

On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 10:22:01AM -0800, Xah Lee wrote:

> When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
> mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
> knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
> <proprietary product> is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX.

Everybody is asked not to advocate non-free products on the GNU
mailing-lists/newsgroups, even when on-topic.  There are other forums
where one can do this (e.g. comp.emacs).

Please don't do this again on help-gnu-emacs.  Thanks!

>   Xah

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[Richard Riley]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hi, Xah!
>
> On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 10:22:01AM -0800, Xah Lee wrote:
>
>> When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
>> mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
>> knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
>> <proprietary product> is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX.
>
> Everybody is asked not to advocate non-free products on the GNU
> mailing-lists/newsgroups, even when on-topic.  There are other forums
> where one can do this (e.g. comp.emacs).
>
> Please don't do this again on help-gnu-emacs.  Thanks!
>
>>   Xah

I'm quite interested in this.

So one can not, for example, say "Visual Studio has this great feature Y
which is superior to Emacs function Z for the following reasons, can
anyone suggest how best to improve Emacs to reach the same level"?

Sounds a tad "non free" if you don't mind the pun.

Re: Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Richard!

On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:18:40AM +0100, Richard Riley wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> > Hi, Xah!

> > On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 10:22:01AM -0800, Xah Lee wrote:

> >> When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
> >> mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
> >> knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
> >> <proprietary product> is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX.

> > Everybody is asked not to advocate non-free products on the GNU
> > mailing-lists/newsgroups, even when on-topic.  There are other forums
> > where one can do this (e.g. comp.emacs).

> > Please don't do this again on help-gnu-emacs.  Thanks!

> >>   Xah

> I'm quite interested in this.

> So one can not, for example, say "Visual Studio has this great feature
> Y which is superior to Emacs function Z for the following reasons, can
> anyone suggest how best to improve Emacs to reach the same level"?

The abstract principle is that the GNU groups exist to promote free
software in general, and GNU software in particular.  Your hypothetical
sentence is entirely consistant with that aim.

> Sounds a tad "non free" if you don't mind the pun.

It is a tad non free.  But only a tad.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[rustom]

On Dec 3, 8:18 am, Richard Riley <rileyrg...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So one can not, for example, say "Visual Studio has this great feature Y
> which is superior to Emacs function Z for the following reasons, can
> anyone suggest how best to improve Emacs to reach the same level"?

And what about
'emacs-on-windows/mac does ... that emacs-on-linux does not do'

Is this then advocacy for windows/mac?

Re: Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 15:52, rustom <rustompmody@gmail.com> wrote:

> And what about
> 'emacs-on-windows/mac does ... that emacs-on-linux does not do'
>
> Is this then advocacy for windows/mac?

It would be, perhaps. But no functionality is added to Emacs for
Windows if the equivalent functionality is not also there (or being
implemented) for free systems.

  Juanma

Re: Inappropriate advocacy [Was: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?]

[Xah Lee]

On Dec 2, 4:23 pm, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi,Xah!
>
> On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 10:22:01AM -0800,XahLee wrote:
> > When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
> > mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
> > knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
> > <proprietary product> is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX.
>
> Everybody is asked not to advocate non-free products on the GNU
> mailing-lists/newsgroups, even when on-topic.  There are other forums
> where one can do this (e.g. comp.emacs).
>
> Please don't do this again on help-gnu-emacs.  Thanks!

It's not advocacy. The discussion disgressed to whether TeX is the
best typesetting software.

I quote the original message by David: “It's called TeX.  Probably the
best type setting software out there.”.

I pointed out that it is a myth. I pointed out, in summary, i claim
that in fact Mathematica, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress are all better as
judged by professionals in their respective fields.

Also, please understand that mentioning of other software here is not
advocacy. For example, Google, Yahoo, MSN's search engine service,
Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows OS and Microsoft Word, TextMate
editor, Safari and Opera browsers, various distribution of Linuxes
Desktops that are not sactioned by Free Software Foundation, several
Unix™es, are all frequently mentioned, and sometimes digressed into
debate on their merits.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Tariq]

On Dec 1, 1:22 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:


> that's one of the myth among open source tech geekers.
>
> TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
> professionals.
>

See my last comment below.


>  Mathematica is a
> order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
> passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
> markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
> type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3)

You are dismally confused about the purpose of TeX and Mathematica.
They do not address the same problem, and hence comparing them as you
do only betrays ignorance on your part. Moreover, I do hope this
example of algebraic expression of yours is just another of your
mistakes and not what people who wrote the algorithms for Mathematica
should be proud of.


> In the domain of publishing, there's Framemaker and QuarkXPress, long
> been the top professional tool since early 1990s. (i haven't used them
> though) I do not know whether TeX has even have a good percentage of
> market share among professionals typesetters.
>

What has market share to do with being a top professional tool? If you
are habitually confusing quality with something else, I would highly
recommend a good course in logic at a nearby community college.

Tariq

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Xah Lee]

On Dec 3, 5:47 pm, Tariq <tariq.per...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 1, 1:22 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > that's one of the myth among open source tech geekers.
>
> > TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
> > professionals.
>
> See my last comment below.
>
> >  Mathematica is a
> > order of magnitude better because its typesetting system not only
> > passively show math formulas as a pretty printing system, but the
> > markup syntax is also semantically meaningful. (for example, when you
> > type set x^2/x^3, it actually knows that it is x^(2/3)
>
> You are dismally confused about the purpose of TeX and Mathematica.
> They do not address the same problem, and hence comparing them as you
> do only betrays ignorance on your part. Moreover, I do hope this
> example of algebraic expression of yours is just another of your
> mistakes and not what people who wrote the algorithms for Mathematica
> should be proud of.
>
> > In the domain of publishing, there's Framemaker and QuarkXPress, long
> > been the top professional tool since early 1990s. (i haven't used them
> > though) I do not know whether TeX has even have a good percentage of
> > market share among professionals typesetters.
>
> What has market share to do with being a top professional tool? If you
> are habitually confusing quality with something else, I would highly
> recommend a good course in logic at a nearby community college.
>
> Tariq

Alan Mackenzie requested not to discuss Mathematica here. I wish to
end this conversation here too.

since you cross posted to comp.tex.tex, i'll further my argument with
you there.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[G. A. Edgar]

In article
<26c8eecf-4e39-4ef6-8a3c-83bdf7f1f32f@e1g2000pra.googlegroups.com>, Xah
Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> wrote:

> TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
> professionals.

Correct.  TeX is only the best tool among those typesetting
professionals who typeset mathematics.  Most typesetting professionals
hate to do mathematics.

Get a math research journal from the library.  Any one. Read the
"instructions for authors" contained there.  It will say that
manuscripts must be in Latex.  A few journals may grudgingly also
accept Microsoft Word.  That's it.

-- 
G. A. Edgar                              http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Xah Lee]

Xah Lee wrote:
> > TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
> > professionals.


G. A. Edgar wrote:
> Correct.  TeX is only the best tool among those typesetting
> professionals who typeset mathematics.  Most typesetting professionals
> hate to do mathematics.
>
> Get a math research journal from the library.  Any one. Read the
> "instructions for authors" contained there.  It will say that
> manuscripts must be in Latex.  A few journals may grudgingly also
> accept Microsoft Word.  That's it.
>
> --
> G. A. Edgar         http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/

The issue is this thread, is not “is TeX used by math publishers?” or
“is TeX good for typesetting mathematics?”.

The question in this thread is:

Is TeX among one of the best tool among typesetting professionals.

My claim is that no.

For example, if you look at Wikipedia on the article typesetting,
under their Digital Era subsection, you'll see that TeX is mentioned
only after the discussion of some 10 or so other systems.

Also, if you look into the article to see whether TeX is used other
than by math and programing tech geekers, you find this curious last
paragraph, i quote:

TeX is a very powerful typesetting system used in many applications
other than mathematics. The Editora graphical user interface written
by D. Klutz[citation needed], using TeX as typesetting engine, offers
a powerful pagination tool for Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines
[citation needed]. Editora is used by the major Classified Ads
Newspapers and Magazines in France[citation needed]. The 12,000 pages
landmark French dictionary Le Robert edition 2003 was typeset by TeX
in less than 10 minutes[citation needed].

That paragraph sounds like some TeX geeking fanatic tried to make TeX
look better on that page. Also notice the lots of “citation needed”
claims. The first sentence defensively sets out a claim. The last
sentence about Le Robert seems to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

here's a full quote of the Wikipedia's article on typesetting on the
section “Digital Era” as of toda 2008-12-04. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Digital_era )
--------------------------------------
Digital era

The next generation of phototypesetting machines to emerge were those
that generated characters on a Cathode ray tube. Typical of the type
was the Autologic APS5. These machines were the mainstay of
phototypesetting for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Such machines could
be 'driven online' by a computer front-end system or take their data
from magnetic tape. Type fonts were stored digitally on conventional
magnetic disk drives.

Computers excel at automatically typesetting documents. Character-by-
character computer-aided phototypesetting was in turn rapidly rendered
obsolete in the 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster
image processor to render an entire page to a single high-resolution
digital image, now known as imagesetting.

The first commercially successful laser imagesetter, able to make use
of a raster image processor was the Monotype Lasercomp. ECRM,
Compugraphic (later purchased by Agfa) and others rapidly followed
suit with machines of their own.

Early minicomputer-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s
and early 1980s such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33, Xyvision,
troff from Bell Labs, and IBM's Script product with CRT terminals,
replaced these electro-mechanical devices and used text markup
languages to describe type and other page formatting information. The
descendants of these text markup languages include SGML, XML and HTML.

The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up
and eventually produced entire pages and signatures of 4, 8, 16 or
more pages using imposition software on devices such as the Israeli-
made Scitex Dolev. The data stream used by these systems to drive page
layout on printers and imagesetters led to the development of printer
control languages such as Adobe PostScript and Hewlett-Packard's HP
PCL.

Text typeset in Iowan Old Style roman, italics and small caps,
optimised at approximately 10 words per line, typeface sized at 14
points on 1.4 x leading, with 0.2 points extra tracking. Extract of an
essay by Oscar Wilde The Renaissance of English Art ca. 1882.

Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and
advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These
companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or
film output, and formed a large component of the graphic arts
industry. In the United States these companies were located in rural
Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest where labor was cheap, but
within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers.

In 1985, desktop publishing became available, starting with the Apple
Macintosh, Adobe PageMaker (and later QuarkXPress) and PostScript.
Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly-lowering costs,
popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of
typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated
systems. At the same time, word processing systems such as Wang and
WordPerfect revolutionized office documents. They did not, however,
have the typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated
book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and
justification rules (H and J).

By the year 2000 this industry segment had shrunk because publishers
were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on
their own in-house computers. Many found that the cost of maintaining
high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more
economical to out-source to freelancers and graphic design
specialists.

The availability of cheap, or free, fonts made the conversion to do-it-
yourself easier but also opened up a gap between skilled designers and
amateurs. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF file
format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts,
readable on major computer and operating systems.

[edit]
SGML and XML systems

The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting
engines popular. Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles
33, OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher (XPP), FrameMaker,
Arbortext, YesLogic's Prince, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. These
products allow users to program their typesetting process around the
SGML/XML with the help of scripting languages. Some of them, such as
UltraXML, provide attractive WYSIWYG interfaces with support for XML
standards and Unicode to attract a wider spectrum of users.

[edit]
Troff and Successors
Main article: Troff

During the mid-1970s Joseph Ossanna, working at Bell Laboratories,
wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T
phototypesetter owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian
Kernighan to support output to different equipment such as laser
printers and the like. While its use has fallen off, it is still
included with a number of Unix and Unix-like systems and has been used
to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Some
versions, as well as a GNU work-alike called groff, are now open
source.

[edit]
TeX and LaTeX

Mathematical text typeset using TeX and the AMS Euler font.
Main article: TeX

The TeX system, developed by Donald E. Knuth at the end of 70s, is
another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has
set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. TeX is
considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, and deals more with
appearance than structure. The LaTeX macro package written by Leslie
Lamport at the beginning of 80s, offered a simpler interface, and an
easier way to systematically encode the structure of a document. LaTeX
markup is very widely used in academic circles for published papers
and even books. Standard TeX does not provide a WYSIWYG interface,
though there are programs such as LyX and Scientific Workplace that
provide one. Another WYSIWYG editor very much inspired by TeX is
TeXmacs.

TeX is a very powerful typesetting system used in many applications
other than mathematics. The Editora graphical user interface written
by D. Klutz[citation needed], using TeX as typesetting engine, offers
a powerful pagination tool for Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines
[citation needed]. Editora is used by the major Classified Ads
Newspapers and Magazines in France[citation needed]. The 12,000 pages
landmark French dictionary Le Robert edition 2003 was typeset by TeX
in less than 10 minutes[citation needed].

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: wikipedia's (ascii) math notation? emacs easy-way to translate it?

[Andreas Politz]

Xah Lee wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
>>> TeX is proprobably not among one of the best tool among typesetting
>>> professionals.
> 
> 
> G. A. Edgar wrote:
>> Correct.  TeX is only the best tool among those typesetting
>> professionals who typeset mathematics.  Most typesetting professionals
>> hate to do mathematics.
>>
>> Get a math research journal from the library.  Any one. Read the
>> "instructions for authors" contained there.  It will say that
>> manuscripts must be in Latex.  A few journals may grudgingly also
>> accept Microsoft Word.  That's it.
>>
>> --
>> G. A. Edgar         http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/
> 
> The issue is this thread, is not “is TeX used by math publishers?” or
> “is TeX good for typesetting mathematics?”.
> 
> The question in this thread is:
> 
> Is TeX among one of the best tool among typesetting professionals.
> 
> My claim is that no.
> 
> For example, if you look at Wikipedia on the article typesetting,
> under their Digital Era subsection, you'll see that TeX is mentioned
> only after the discussion of some 10 or so other systems.

It looks to me that Tex is one of only 2 specific systems with it's
own subsubsection in this subsection.


> 
> Also, if you look into the article to see whether TeX is used other
> than by math and programing tech geekers, you find this curious last
> paragraph, i quote:
> 
> TeX is a very powerful typesetting system used in many applications
> other than mathematics. The Editora graphical user interface written
> by D. Klutz[citation needed], using TeX as typesetting engine, offers
> a powerful pagination tool for Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines
> [citation needed]. Editora is used by the major Classified Ads
> Newspapers and Magazines in France[citation needed]. The 12,000 pages
> landmark French dictionary Le Robert edition 2003 was typeset by TeX
> in less than 10 minutes[citation needed].
> 
> That paragraph sounds like some TeX geeking fanatic tried to make TeX
> look better on that page. Also notice the lots of “citation needed”
> claims. The first sentence defensively sets out a claim. The last
> sentence about Le Robert seems to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

You seem to have noticed this by now and trying here to diminish this fact
by attacking the people who wrote the article.

I am not forwarding this to comp.text.tex. I suspect you have enough
entertainment there already.

-ap

> 
> here's a full quote of the Wikipedia's article on typesetting on the
> section “Digital Era” as of toda 2008-12-04. (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Digital_era )
> --------------------------------------
> Digital era
> 
> The next generation of phototypesetting machines to emerge were those
> that generated characters on a Cathode ray tube. Typical of the type
> was the Autologic APS5. These machines were the mainstay of
> phototypesetting for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Such machines could
> be 'driven online' by a computer front-end system or take their data
> from magnetic tape. Type fonts were stored digitally on conventional
> magnetic disk drives.
> 
> Computers excel at automatically typesetting documents. Character-by-
> character computer-aided phototypesetting was in turn rapidly rendered
> obsolete in the 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster
> image processor to render an entire page to a single high-resolution
> digital image, now known as imagesetting.
> 
> The first commercially successful laser imagesetter, able to make use
> of a raster image processor was the Monotype Lasercomp. ECRM,
> Compugraphic (later purchased by Agfa) and others rapidly followed
> suit with machines of their own.
> 
> Early minicomputer-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s
> and early 1980s such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33, Xyvision,
> troff from Bell Labs, and IBM's Script product with CRT terminals,
> replaced these electro-mechanical devices and used text markup
> languages to describe type and other page formatting information. The
> descendants of these text markup languages include SGML, XML and HTML.
> 
> The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up
> and eventually produced entire pages and signatures of 4, 8, 16 or
> more pages using imposition software on devices such as the Israeli-
> made Scitex Dolev. The data stream used by these systems to drive page
> layout on printers and imagesetters led to the development of printer
> control languages such as Adobe PostScript and Hewlett-Packard's HP
> PCL.
> 
> Text typeset in Iowan Old Style roman, italics and small caps,
> optimised at approximately 10 words per line, typeface sized at 14
> points on 1.4 x leading, with 0.2 points extra tracking. Extract of an
> essay by Oscar Wilde The Renaissance of English Art ca. 1882.
> 
> Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and
> advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These
> companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or
> film output, and formed a large component of the graphic arts
> industry. In the United States these companies were located in rural
> Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest where labor was cheap, but
> within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers.
> 
> In 1985, desktop publishing became available, starting with the Apple
> Macintosh, Adobe PageMaker (and later QuarkXPress) and PostScript.
> Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly-lowering costs,
> popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of
> typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated
> systems. At the same time, word processing systems such as Wang and
> WordPerfect revolutionized office documents. They did not, however,
> have the typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated
> book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and
> justification rules (H and J).
> 
> By the year 2000 this industry segment had shrunk because publishers
> were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on
> their own in-house computers. Many found that the cost of maintaining
> high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more
> economical to out-source to freelancers and graphic design
> specialists.
> 
> The availability of cheap, or free, fonts made the conversion to do-it-
> yourself easier but also opened up a gap between skilled designers and
> amateurs. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF file
> format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts,
> readable on major computer and operating systems.
> 
> [edit]
> SGML and XML systems
> 
> The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting
> engines popular. Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles
> 33, OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher (XPP), FrameMaker,
> Arbortext, YesLogic's Prince, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. These
> products allow users to program their typesetting process around the
> SGML/XML with the help of scripting languages. Some of them, such as
> UltraXML, provide attractive WYSIWYG interfaces with support for XML
> standards and Unicode to attract a wider spectrum of users.
> 
> [edit]
> Troff and Successors
> Main article: Troff
> 
> During the mid-1970s Joseph Ossanna, working at Bell Laboratories,
> wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T
> phototypesetter owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian
> Kernighan to support output to different equipment such as laser
> printers and the like. While its use has fallen off, it is still
> included with a number of Unix and Unix-like systems and has been used
> to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Some
> versions, as well as a GNU work-alike called groff, are now open
> source.
> 
> [edit]
> TeX and LaTeX
> 
> Mathematical text typeset using TeX and the AMS Euler font.
> Main article: TeX
> 
> The TeX system, developed by Donald E. Knuth at the end of 70s, is
> another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has
> set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. TeX is
> considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, and deals more with
> appearance than structure. The LaTeX macro package written by Leslie
> Lamport at the beginning of 80s, offered a simpler interface, and an
> easier way to systematically encode the structure of a document. LaTeX
> markup is very widely used in academic circles for published papers
> and even books. Standard TeX does not provide a WYSIWYG interface,
> though there are programs such as LyX and Scientific Workplace that
> provide one. Another WYSIWYG editor very much inspired by TeX is
> TeXmacs.
> 
> TeX is a very powerful typesetting system used in many applications
> other than mathematics. The Editora graphical user interface written
> by D. Klutz[citation needed], using TeX as typesetting engine, offers
> a powerful pagination tool for Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines
> [citation needed]. Editora is used by the major Classified Ads
> Newspapers and Magazines in France[citation needed]. The 12,000 pages
> landmark French dictionary Le Robert edition 2003 was typeset by TeX
> in less than 10 minutes[citation needed].
> 
>   Xah
> ∑ http://xahlee.org/
> 
> ☄

Re: Inappropriate advocacy

[Miles Bader]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>> When tech geekers speak of TeX, they often speak of in the domain of
>> mathematical knowledge presentation and publishing. In the math
>> knowledge presentation, i am a expert, and personally known that
>> <proprietary product> is a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE better than TeX.
>
> Everybody is asked not to advocate non-free products on the GNU
> mailing-lists/newsgroups, even when on-topic.  There are other forums
> where one can do this (e.g. comp.emacs).

On the other hand, a recommendation by Xahlee ("i am a expert"
... heehee) is generally considered a strong negative, so maybe it
should be ok for him?

Kinda like every politician wants Al Quaeda to endorse their opponent...

-Miles

-- 
Circus, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see
men, women and children acting the fool.