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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Generating PDFs with Ada
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000
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Date: 2011-01-16T11:59:18+00:00
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"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Better XML as source than TeX/LaTex there. Some document model exist
> for math notations, and anyway, the nature of XML allow you to write a
> document without even the need for a document model reference (you may
> rely on good tag name and not too much obfuscating attributes).

I don't see how you can recommend free-structured XML.

XML (in this context) is, or could be, a way of allocating the content
of a document to its appropriate place in the structure of the document
using in-text markup.

This leads to two questions:

(a) what is the structure of the document?

(b) what markup are you going to use?

Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we
going to say

<book>
  <chapter>
    <paragraph>

or

<livre>
  <chapitre>
    <paragraphe>

???

Someone in this thread asked whether you could expect to find a
secretary who understood [La]TeX. I'm pretty sure it used to be
possible; but I wouldn't have thought that was the answer, instead you'd
expect some front-end document preparation system (Wikipedia are going
this way, I believe, to reduce the fear that inexperienced users feel
when seeing MediaWiki markup for the first time).