Re: Sane Syntax

On 10 ago, 12:35, Torsten Bronger <bron...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hallöchen!

Luis Rivera writes:
On Aug 10, 11:33 am, Torsten Bronger <bron...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

[...]

However, the same parser for all backends is the better way in my
opinion.

So you want a text processor which could support several markup
languages (for any conceivable application, from man pages to
fliers and multilingual multicolumn critical editions) and drop
XML, HTML, PDF, PS, as output. That's a far longer shot.

Actually I don't think about this. Granted, you can define an
internal intermediate format, parse into this format, and plug the
backends to this format from the other side.  Then, the input syntax
would be flexible, but only withing a lot of constraints.  There is
still *the* markup syntax for which the intermediate form was
designed.


Ideally, there could be no "internal intermediate format". There might
be an "internal programming language" with all the bells and whistles
necessary to support all the markup input and final output formats. If
you don't mean something like this, then I don't get it. Please,
elaborate.

But if you have one instance of the parser in texinfo.tex+TeX, and
the other instance in makeinfo, you have to keep two complex pieces
of code in two very different languages for the same purpose
synchronised and maintained.  I don't think that this is good.


That's just another sign that the specification of the markup input is
irrelevant to implementation details of the output formatters. My
point in bringing out Texinfo was twofold: 1. the specification of a
markup language that allows several outputs, perhaps implemented by
different programs; 2. it is not tied to use LaTeX in its current
avatar as the formatter.

Cheers,

Luis.
.

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