Sile, a typesetting system inspired by TeX and InDesign • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by alok-g » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 3:38 PM UTC

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible.

>> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet.

Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line between a typesetting system and a word processor, but if output of the typesetting system could be produced in real-time, then that boundary should not need to exist.)

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

#52

Post by tvdijk » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 3:59 PM UTC

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

Great question. I've been wondering why nobody (AFAIK) has done this. Seems like the only worthwile reason to do something as silly as rewriting TeX.

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

#53

Post by oatmeal_coffee » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:23 PM UTC

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

You can type directly into layouts in InDesign and see your line and page breaks in realtime. I think where the problem lies in InDesign is that it is, at its core, a typesetting and layout application and not a word processing application. There is a lot of work to do to get to the point of being able to write in your layout, and pages don't get added dynamically when adding new content as easily as they do in a typesetting application.

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

#54

Post by oatmeal_coffee » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

tvdijk wrote: post #52

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

Great question. I've been wondering why nobody (AFAIK) has done this. Seems like the only worthwile reason to do something as silly as rewriting TeX.

I foresee mashing a robust typesetting application and a robust word processing application as being an extremely difficult thing to do well. Both are very different use cases and resulting environments.

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

#55

Post by voyou » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

> Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types?

But why would you want to do that? The display of text that is good for editing is not necessarily the same as the display of text that is good on the page.

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

#56

Post by voyou » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

tvdijk wrote: post #52

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

Great question. I've been wondering why nobody (AFAIK) has done this. Seems like the only worthwile reason to do something as silly as rewriting TeX.

TeXmacs[1] more or less does this. As a bonus, as well as rewriting TeX, it also includes a rewrite of emacs.

1: http://www.texmacs.org/

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

#57

Post by cbhl » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:57 PM UTC

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

I'm not sure about SILE, but for TeX, the algorithm determining the line breaks was exponential in the length of the document. Even on a modern machine, a moderately complex document will take a few seconds to run; in the 80s and 90s, my professors told me it'd take minutes to run a TeX pass.

The reason why Google Docs / Word / etc. can show the line breaks in real time is that it uses a faster (but less "optimal") algorithm.

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

#58

Post by tvdijk » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:57 PM UTC

oatmeal_coffee wrote: post #53

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

You can type directly into layouts in InDesign and see your line and page breaks in realtime. I think where the problem lies in InDesign is that it is, at its core, a typesetting and layout application and not a word processing application. There is a lot of work to do to get to the point of being able to write in your layout, and pages don't get added dynamically when adding new content as easily as they do in a typ…

You wouldn't necessarily be "writing in your layout". You could do something where you have a separate preview pane that updates in real time. Similar to what Apple showed earlier this year with their Swift playground IDE, only for typesetting.

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

#59

Post by oatmeal_coffee » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

So, essentially, this is a rewrite for TeX. But the reality is that creating complex layouts really, truly requires GUI layout tools. No matter how good the output is for this application, it's entering into an firmly-established market with a few, large, expensive players, and not a lot of action.

Publishing automation tools are nothing new, but one has to give up a certain amount (usually a lot) of control to create a document on the cheap. Even for those workflows that are intensely reliant on templates, designers are still working in InDesign for the initial design, which is then handed off to a person, or more frequently a system, to translate into something to be automated.

Even as a long-time TeX user, I'm not sure what the appeal would be here, but I could have been in publishing too long to see this for what it really is.

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

#60

Post by munificent » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

oatmeal_coffee wrote: post #53

alok-g wrote: post #51

>> The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible. >> SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. Genuinely asking: Why cannot the above be done in real-time as the user types? (I understand that would blur the line…

You can type directly into layouts in InDesign and see your line and page breaks in realtime. I think where the problem lies in InDesign is that it is, at its core, a typesetting and layout application and not a word processing application. There is a lot of work to do to get to the point of being able to write in your layout, and pages don't get added dynamically when adding new content as easily as they do in a typ…

> pages don't get added dynamically when adding new content as easily as they do in a typesetting application.

InDesign will actually do this. I think it's called "Dynamic Flow" or something? It can automatically append new pages to fit the content.

In general, it's not very eager to do this because when you consider spreads (distinct left-hand and right-hand pages), inserting a new page will affect the layout of all subsequent pages. You could insert a new spread, but that may not be what the user wants.

In other words, if the user is laying out pages, actual pages matter. They aren't just an implementation detail derived from the length of the text.