Does it have a context-free syntax? Because this is basically the only problem with TeX: You cannot parse it.
What does context-free syntax mean? And what does “you cannot parse it” mean? Meaning you can’t stream it, you need the whole file first?
The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#22The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's got a horrible spacing problem. These indicate to me that the shiny new foundations are really quite wobbly.
Wow, I thought you were exaggerating but it really is terrible. Page 15 of the manual is inexplicably 90% blank too.
So it's clearly just a super-rough prototype, which would be fine except that when it brands itself as "its job is to produce beautiful printed documents"... it gives the impression that it already does this, when the reality is clearly far, far away.
I think the project needs to be honest about where it's at.
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#23The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's got a horrible spacing problem. These indicate to me that the shiny new foundations are really quite wobbly.
Wow, I thought you were exaggerating but it really is terrible . Page 15 of the manual is inexplicably 90% blank too. So it's clearly just a super -rough prototype, which would be fine except that when it brands itself as "its job is to produce beautiful printed documents"... it gives the impression that it already does this, when the reality is clearly far, far away. I think the project needs to be honest about wher…
Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack.
For instance, the foundation of the house is most critical but when everyone looks at the foundation and asks, “where’s the house? This house can’t be much they brand themselves as a beautiful château but all it is is a big hole in the ground...”
A project like this is no minor task! :)
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#24The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's got a horrible spacing problem. These indicate to me that the shiny new foundations are really quite wobbly.
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Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#25Related from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8392653 A bit from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12411446
derp
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#26I think TeX is terrible, so keep it up please, but the examples all look really bad. If you want to sell someone on "this system will help you make beautiful documents", the examples need to wow.
How is TeX terrible? I’d appreciate it if you could calibrate your response roughly to my level of discernment, which is to perceive LaTeX documents as better looking than Microsoft Word, but not be able to articulate why, or have much finer grained resolution than that.
Generally when you can’t discern the rational for a preference, it often means the underlying basis is associative rather than objective. That’s how most of us discern most things most of the time—a particular appearance tends to correlate with past performance.
You’ve probably read a bunch of very good papers typeset in TeX.
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, I thought you were exaggerating but it really is terrible . Page 15 of the manual is inexplicably 90% blank too. So it's clearly just a super -rough prototype, which would be fine except that when it brands itself as "its job is to produce beautiful printed documents"... it gives the impression that it already does this, when the reality is clearly far, far away. I think the project needs to be honest about wher…
Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack. For instance, the foundation of the house is most critical but when everyone looks at the foundation and asks, “where’s the house? This house can’t be much they brand themselves as a beautiful château but all it is is a big hole in the ground...” A project like this is no minor task! :)
The very first versions of TeX did fewer things, but they did them really perfectly.
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#28No math, sadly.
There are several tickets related to math handling. See https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile/pull/578 and other tickets referenced there.
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#29Does it have a context-free syntax? Because this is basically the only problem with TeX: You cannot parse it.
What does context-free syntax mean? And what does “you cannot parse it” mean? Meaning you can’t stream it, you need the whole file first?
Tex is like a programming language, you have to "run" the program to generate output, and that execution is tightly tied to producing output on paper pages. This means it is extremely difficult to produce good looking HTML, or accessible output.
Re: The SILE Typesetter: Simon's Improved Layout Engine
#30The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's got a horrible spacing problem. These indicate to me that the shiny new foundations are really quite wobbly.
It's an open source project that will gladly accept patches. I've submitted patches for those things that didn't work for me and while getting feedback is useful, getting fixes is better.