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Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:55:05 +0100
From: Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>
Organization: future apps GmbH
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Subject: Re: comp.lang.ada Digest, Vol 19, Issue 114
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Date: 2005-03-21T11:52:13+01:00
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Robert C. Leif wrote:

Have you looked at Simon Wright's ASIS2XML?
http://www.pushface.org/asis2xml/

>    Although in principle these additions would be useful, the simulation
> capability should be separated from the mathematical capacity.  Ada should
> stop being based on glass-typewriters!  The new front end should be XML
> including MathML.  Ada sources would be in XHTML-strict.

(X)HTML has been criticized for missing good structuring
properties (sections are not headings, div is only a workaround ...).
Examples in the book by David Megginson's book.

>  Ada should be able
> to parse expressions written in MathML. Simulation could then be added to
> this with outputs in scalable vector graphics (SVG).  This would result in a
> language with some SEX-Appeal.

Hm. I think this is the job of a good editing environment.
Ada has a grammar. The grammar can be mapped to an internal
XML representation that is internal to the editor, o.K..
 But why touch Ada?
A fairly simple XSL program can be used to extract plain Ada source text from
a combined source text document that includes graphics, reference, etc.,
in addition to the Ada source text.
A fancy XSL program can do all sorts of project specific processing.
 For sure, if you only touch some non-Ada piece of a source document,
the Ada part doesn't need to be recompiled. This needs some bookkeeping,
at least. A piecewise intergration with a VCS seems desirable, and XML
can help here.
 Sounds like quite a bit of work to make such a thing.

A similar technique has used text processor macros to separate source
text from prose and pictures, IIRC.

Georg