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Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

sile-typesetter.org

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Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#31

Post by MrDosu »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #27
MrDosu wrote: post #24

News@11: Haphazard rewrite of popular standard piece of software in random scripting language X revolutionizes the field, says naive programmer.

How about "Idle HN commentator wastes time mocking other people's work instead of offering any constructive input at all." Seriously. There are no claims about 'revolutionising' anything, just some comparisons with existing software.

The only comparison is the block level layout and then it goes into claims about being better then TeX and InDesign without offering any feature besides "scripted in a different language". The OP does not even begin to understand the complexities involved in the named software to make their featureset happen. Look at the SILE codebase, its amateur hour... Things like this are fun little hobbyist practice.

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#32

Post by jimhefferon »

simoncozens wrote: post #15
perlgeek wrote: post #7

Does it support typesetting mathematical formulas like tex/latex does? That's a very important feature for any kind of scientific publishing.

It doesn't, yet; TeX is very good at that, so if that's a need you have, stick with TeX. I'm not trying to corner the whole typesetting market! However, it shouldn't be difficult (especially now that MathJax is in Javascript, a language not a million miles away from Lua) to add support for maths typesetting. Patches welcome!

Very nice system, Simon. Can I ask if you have given math any thought? Obviously TeX does great with math but there are still some things that many people think could bear improvement, with thirty years of hindsight (including, as I understand it, additional math categories and omitting the restriction on just a few fonts).

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#33

Post by andreasvc »

abritishguy wrote: post #3

Looks interesting, the number 1 feature for me is compile time though - I want instant previews which I can't get with latex.

Have you tried Gummi? It's an editor with auto-updating PDF preview. It doesn't improve on compile time because it just runs pdflatex behind the scenes, but I find it usable when designing figures using tikz.

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#34

Post by andreasvc »

maaarghk wrote: post #22
zvrba wrote: post #13

I have looked at the PDF manual linked to from the homepage. If that PDF is produced bye Sile itself, I'm not impressed because the rendered text looks crowded. Perhaps the choice of the font is at fault, perhaps the engine lacks TeX's font kerning, perhaps.. Whatever the reason, the output is IMO ugly.

I agree, I opened that PDF and the first page has two off-centre lines... not particularly impressed. And the line heights and kerning are all over the place. It's actually straight up terrible. Sorry, OP.

The design issues with this manual do not necessarily detract from the technical capabilities of this new system. But it's bad advertising of course.

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#36

Post by oneandoneis2 »

MrDosu wrote: post #31
matthewmacleod wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about "Idle HN commentator wastes time mocking other people's work instead of offering any constructive input at all." Seriously. There are no claims about 'revolutionising' anything, just some comparisons with existing software.

The only comparison is the block level layout and then it goes into claims about being better then TeX and InDesign without offering any feature besides "scripted in a different language". The OP does not even begin to understand the complexities involved in the named software to make their featureset happen. Look at the SILE codebase, its amateur hour... Things like this are fun little hobbyist practice.

"amateur hour".. you have no idea who 'the OP' is, do you? :)

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#37

Post by abritishguy »

andreasvc wrote: post #33
abritishguy wrote: post #3

Looks interesting, the number 1 feature for me is compile time though - I want instant previews which I can't get with latex.

Have you tried Gummi? It's an editor with auto-updating PDF preview. It doesn't improve on compile time because it just runs pdflatex behind the scenes, but I find it usable when designing figures using tikz.

I use texpad which has auto-updating PDF preview, it does partial builds so often even with a large complex document it only takes about a second to update (although this is too long in my opinion). Occasionally it can't do partial builds (some libraries screw it up) and then I'm stuck waiting 10 seconds or more for the preview to update.

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#38

Post by a3_nm »

agos wrote: post #25
efaref wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't even get consistent line spacing in the table of contents. See http://imgur.com/ejg2FTS

skimmed briefly. page 16 has four words in it.

The header font changes randomly as well (compare pages numbered 48 and 50, actually 52 and 54 in the document).

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#39

Post by a3_nm »

juriansluiman wrote: post #14
davebees wrote: post #9

Some sample inputs–outputs would be great.

From the PDF manual file[0] it is at glance almost similar to Latex. \begin[papersize=a4]{document} \chapter{Hi there} Hello world \include[src=chapter2] \end{document} Unfortunately, the power of Latex for maths display and vectorized graphs are completely absent. It also states image handling is still rudimentarily available (only PNG files, for example). I also am not really impressed by the type setting from the…

Talking of the syntax, I am a bit disappointed that it is similar to TeX's. In my opinion, TeX's style syntax is one of the most visible features that haven't stood the test of time (in comparison to, say, an XML-like syntax).

(Of course, in the case of (La)TeX it is made worse by the ridiculously unhelpful messages in case of syntax errors.)

Re: Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign

#40

Post by bloat »

crystal88_ wrote: post #30

I would like to see some comparison of DocBook and SILE too. Any reasons for using SILE instead of DocBook? The simpler syntax on its own is good, but not enough to switch.

How is Pollen (http://pollenpub.com/) coming along?

Have there been any more books written using it, apart from Butterick’s Practical Typography (http://practicaltypography.com/)?

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