
We need constrainable lightweight markup languages - bootload
http://everypageispageone.com/2016/06/05/why-we-need-constrainable-lightweight-markup-languages/
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jessriedel
I'll keep saying it: _The_ most cost-effective way to advance math and hard
science research in the United States would be for some person or organization
to put down $1 million to hire some developers to produce an enterprise-
quality replacement of LaTeX, with an editor. It ought to be somewhere between
LaTeX and Markdown in complexity. The amount of grad student, post-doc, and
professor time that is wasted dealing with LaTeX is staggering. There's just
no reason any should need to spend, e.g., an hour to figure out how to get
columns working.

~~~
theaustinseven
I don't think that rewriting LaTeX is the right route, but rather compiling
something else into LaTeX or making a good LaTeX editor(one where you wouldn't
actually be writing straight LaTeX). I think a sort of SASS or Coffeescript
type language for Latex would be excellent.

~~~
jessriedel
A language that compiles into TeX would be fine. However, there is a huge
danger that the abstraction isn't robust, and everyone would just need to keep
"opening up the hood" to fix things in the original TeX, and then things are
worse than they started.

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gavinpc
I agree that we need extensible lightweight markup languages, but I'm not sure
how the OP distinguishes between a grammar and a constraint. And if by
"language" he didn't mean "grammar," then what did he mean? An example would
have gone a long way.

My experience---and I've seen others comment to this effect---is that James
Clark's nXml mode for emacs is as good as it gets for authoring in XML. If you
already know the commands for structured editing, you have a great headstart.
Also from James Clark is compact Relax NG. It's basically like regex for the
DOM, and I find it pleasant to use. Until you hit something that it can't
specify. But if you really must have a schema, and you have control over it,
it can be worth making your schemas RelaxNG-able.

And anyway, even if you're using markdown or anything else, using it without a
"really sophistocated editor" is (IMHO) "next to impossible" (edit: I mean,
just as painful as anything else).

But yes, I've been ruminating over what I would use to replace Org Mode for
literate programming, where I don't want all of its features (or an Emacs
dependency), yet I do want to create ad-hoc constructs with arbitrary
transforms during export. I haven't tried it, but it looks like Quaint might
be of interest in that area.
([http://breuleux.github.io/quaint/](http://breuleux.github.io/quaint/))

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hyperpape
Good question. In my head I simplified it to "he wants XML schemes without
having to write XML." That's probably a bad assumption or too simplified.

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aurelian15
I totally agree with the article. I have been working (as a university
project) on a semantic markup language which has a well defined, user
specified semantics (comparable to a DTD, yet much easier to write) with user
definable syntax and a TeX-esque markup language, which deduces as much
structure as possible from the DTD, allowing users to write very little while
still being able to transform the document into a semantic graph structure
which can (theoretically) be transformed to any output format.

While the software we've developed is fully usable and quite mature (including
clang-like error messages), there is virtually no documentation. However, a
poster and a presentation of the project, along with all source code
(including the source code of the website) can be found at

[https://ousia-framework.org/](https://ousia-framework.org/)

I'm looking forward to continue the project as soon as I find some time.

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Animats
It is in the nature of such languages to grow. We've seen this happen to MIT
Runoff, which begat nroff, which begat troff, which begat ditroff, which
resulted in TeX. We've seen it happen to HTML, which started as a lightweight
markup language. It's happening to markdown right now.

One of the few approaches that hasn't become bloated is Rich Text Format, and
that's because nobody uses it.

~~~
vlehto
Hey! I use it for many of my personal notes. When I'm not using txt.

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EvanPlaice
We _have_ a lightweight extensible markup language. It's called XML.

When HTML web components are fully supported in all browsers, it'll be
possible to create custom markup elements to extend HTML to include custom
DSLs (Domain Specific Languages).

I already have a library (ng2-markdown) that provides a template tag that can
parse markdown (incl syntax highlighting) in the same manner that the script
tag can parse javascript.

If a parser is already available in javascript, it's not exceedingly difficult
to create new HTML elements.

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znpy
Did you consider troff/nroff programs?

They were/are the programs used to write unix/linux manpages. Such documents
are usually rendered in our terminal via the man utility, but they can export
to html and pdf too (man man).

I used to read a bit about the format and it does not look bad at all.

If you didn't know, Ken Thomposon's "The Go Programming Language" was typesed
using troff (and it looks okay to me).

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accordionclown
i have an entry: zen markup language (z.m.l.)

> [https://medium.com/the-bower/beyond-markdown-
> part-1-23006656...](https://medium.com/the-bower/beyond-markdown-
> part-1-2300665659f7#.c95tsf72z)

built specifically to handle the features of books, as identified by using the
project gutenberg corpus, but can easily be extended to handle whatever other
structures might be required by any long-form docs.

still don't see enough interest in overthrowing markdown to work at raising
the z.m.l. profile at the present time, but i am continuously monitoring the
scene for that sign.

also see my 2013 review piece: "markdown considered harmful"

> [https://medium.com/the-bower/markdown-considered-
> harmful-495...](https://medium.com/the-bower/markdown-considered-
> harmful-495ccfe24a52#.7z6qhs6up)

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Const-me
The article says “and before too long everyone is complaining and saying they
should be going back to WYSIWYG tools”

I wonder what’s wrong with WYSIWYG tools?

Personally, I use MS Word all the time.

It works very well for me and for various people I interact with (clients,
colleagues, bosses, subordinates, friends, family, etc.), for decades already.

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tootie
Since it's 2016, the answer is JSX. Define a core set of react components that
are at feature parity with markdown. Extend it willy nilly.

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jkaptur
Are you implying that the answer will be different in 2017? ;)

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nathancahill
If parent hadn't combined JSX and React, you'd have a fair point. However, JSX
can stand alone, and that would also be my technology of choice.

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gavinpc
Forgive me, but what does any of this have to do with authoring documents?
Aren't JSX and React about coding models and views?

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3pt14159
It doesn't. They are either joking, being snarky, or over estimating the
coding aptitude of people like scientists.

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guscost
Sure, most scientists are not going to have time to learn all the ins and outs
of JavaScript. But you may be underestimating the potential convenience of
composable components. It seems plausible that _well-built_ components, using
JSX and whatever rendering engine you prefer, could be much easier to work
with than a language like LaTex.

Of course building these components would not be a simple task.

