Re: Generating PDFs with Ada

[Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>]

On 1/15/11 4:04 PM, Elias Salom�o Helou Neto wrote:

> Now, for automatic document generation, both from practical and
> technical viewpoints, there is no chance for .rtf/.doc/.odt
> against .tex as an intermediate format for generating .pdf. Sorry if
> this will sound a little bit harsh, but anyone who would choose one of
> the three former against the latter, simply doesn't know what is
> doing. Anything that can be done by .rtf/.doc/.odt can be done with
> LaTeX, but the opposite is just not true.

 From the *practical* point of view, I can think of many features
available in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer (or FrameMaker
or Ventura Publisher, or Adobe Something) not available in TeX.
That's by design. Nevertheless, The ISO Fortran 2003 draft document is
proof that LaTeX is a possibility for this kind of document.  Some
documents accompanying a SofCheck compiler are produced from Lout input.
So that works, too.   (TeXmacs is a formidable editor for technical
stuff. Interestingly, it doesn't use TeX files for storage.)


> If you intend to get to pdf through an intermediate format, tex is
> just the way to go.
>
>> "The point of the XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)
>>   is to create modular technical documents that are easy to reuse with
>>   varied display and delivery mechanisms, such as helpsets, manuals,
>>   hierarchical summaries for small-screen devices, and so on."
>
> I have never heard about DITA before, but I must mention that there is
> nothing book-centric about TeX itself,

TeX's primary *objective* was/is to provide everything for math books,
including TAOCP, WEB, or math papers, don't you think?  Its prominent
features: paragraph breaking, page breaking, insertions, and math
mode, should be telling.  Anything a little more fancy is brittle and
takes huge efforts to get going smoothly (again, from a practical
point of view).  DITA OTOH is not at all about formatting,
or paragraphs, or pages.  It is about topics, and structuring.
About just the content.  It is nowhere like TeX.

Around 2000, a paperback of publications of Knuth's appeared.
In one of the entries about the history of TeX he explains how
Guy Steele(?) prodded him to add \if.  Had Knuth objected, then
his original plan to make TeX unconditionally a format for only
describing text on pages could have succeeded. The plan was,
IIRC, to support user friendly computer programs that would
produce TeX files. (And not have ambitious programmers try to be
typographers and to be text processor designers using a minimal
macro system only, and literally.)


> therefore your objection
> clearly does not apply here.

The conclusion that TeX is easily used for all kinds of layout
sounds a bit optimistic.  Also, programmatic text processing
feels anything like simple redefining or \newcommanding macros.
Or satisfyingly interactive, if you aren't a programmer editing
"source text".  BTDT.

Flexibility comes with additions like PSTricks.
Nice, but no longer just TeX, and certainly, well, full of tricks.

The Fortran 2003 ISO draft standard is using TeX at some point, though.
Don't know if ISO Fortran 2003 has been submitted as PDF, but the
draft document sure shows all signs of having been produced from
TeX input. (pdfTeX-1.40.9, LaTeX with hyperref package.)
But that's a book...  hyperref won't give you Eclipse help views
easily, or will it?  Or .info files.


> TeX is about beautiful typesetting and it
> is a fully fledged macro language, so you can get about anything you
> want from it.

Assembly language has its beauty and you can get anything you
want from it.  True, but assembly language is not thefirst
choice for all programmers, whatever the powers are that
directly assembling program give us.