Re: Re: Math

"Torsten Bronger" <[email protected]> writes:

> [email protected] (Thomas M. Widmann) writes:
> 
> > "Torsten Bronger" <[email protected]> writes:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> But I've seen some examples of XML-->LaTeX conversion directly in
> >> Perl in a book (The LaTeX Web Companion by Goosens/Rahtz).  It's
> >> not as elegant as in XSLT, but it works.  However using this for
> >> MathML is totally new I think.  You could not use existing code.
> >
> > And so, it would take a lot of time.
> 
> Or, you concentrate on the most important elements.  *Nobody* has
> ever implemented the whole of MathML, and probably nobody will.
> Sub- and superscripts, roots, operators, variables, and numbers can
> be enough.

That makes sense.  If only the code is written in a pretty general
way, it should be easy enough to extend later if some users need it.
(Or they could extend it themselves.)

> Another possibility is an <m> element that takes #PCDATA which is a
> LaTeX formula, but with very restricted syntax.  This can be used
> immediately for LaTeX output (which is the most important at the
> moment anyway) and can be translated probably very easily with Perl
> to MathML.  For example tbook offers both <math> and <m>.

I'd rather not do that if it can be avoided.  It might scare non-LaTeX
users away.

> > [...]
> >
> >> >> (And I'm still looking for a good BibTeX replacement in
> >> >> tbook. ;-))
> >> >
> >> > It certainly would be very easy to make an output module called
> >> > Bibulus::tbook which would output the bibliography in tbook
> >> > XML.
> >> 
> >> This is not necessary.  I can import e.g. raw or cooked DocBook
> >> bibliographies, and maybe even the Bibulus XML file itself.
> >
> > You know that better.  But if you can use DocBook bibliographies,
> > what is it that you need for tbook?
> 
> I cannot use them right now, but I could extend tbook to read a
> DocBook bibliography, especially a cooked one.  But where should
> that come from?  BibTeX can't do that, and if I compile my
> bibliography in DocBook directly, I don't know how to use that for
> my LaTeX documents.

Ah yes, of course.  So what you want is something like the following:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Bibulus;
my $bib = new Bibulus;
$bib->style(cite => 'numerical'); # or whatever
$bib->cite('article-noxref'); # and many more
$bib->load('samplebib.xml');
$bib->getbib;
$bib->printxml;

This will insert the labels into the XML tree, prune the unneeded
entries, sort the entries and dump them as Bibulus XML.  (This should
work already, except for the sorting.)

> Therefore I'm useing BibTeX in a very awkward way at the moment, and
> wait until a good XML replacement comes into existence.

I hope we can fulfil your needs!

/Thomas
-- 
\author{Thomas Widmann\thanks{3/2,  54 Mavisbank Gardens,  Glasgow  G51\,1HL,
Scotland, EU\@. Tel.~+44 (141) 419\,9872.}\\{\tt [email protected]}}