On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 06:54:53AM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> Ian Piumarta in the past has done various versions of TEX and (I 
> think) LaTEX in some version of Smalltalk (maybe VisualWorks).
> 
> I think the TEX constraint solver is great, but it really needs a UI 
> to allow WYSIWYG editing rather than the 1960s (bad) style of markup 
> editing. (Remember WYSIWYG doesn't mean closed format. That's just 
> the way MS decided to do it.)

:) Yes, TeX/LaTeX markup can be quite confounding.  For the longest time
I couldn't figure out how to make a simple '\' character (every other
odd character seems to have it's own escape character, but not '\'!)

I'm certainly not against WYSIWYG at all...but I really like the
option of a self-structuring kind of document, similar to what
LaTeX provides.  I spent a couple years working with LyX before I learned
LaTeX and although it was odd at first, having the structure magically
taken care of made a lot of sense after a while.


> 
> It would be terrific to have such a solver with an integrated editor 
> as an central part of Squeak's layout powers.
> 
> Let's drag some of these good ideas kicking and screaming into the 
> 21st century (or at least the 70s).


That would be fabulous, exactly the sort of "itch" that needs scratching.
Without the archaic markup, of course... :)


> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alan
> 
> ------
> 
> At 7:47 AM -0500 3/6/02, kgf at golden.net wrote:
> >Hi all:
> >
> >Over the past couple of days, I\'ve been doing some thinking...normally, I do
> >most of my documentation work in LaTeX, and it does the job quite 
> >well.  It has
> >it\'s obvious quirks, but I prefer it to, say, HTML or some closed-format word
> >processor.
> >
> >Lately I\'ve had several thoughts swimming around my head...I\'ve been playing
> >with BookMorphs and experimenting with \"active essays\" in Squeak. 
> >It\'s gotten
> >me thinking: could there be a better way to craft text?  The 
> >BookMorph/HyperCard
> >idea is fascinating and powerful...but I\'ve still got Literary 
> >Machines swimming
> >in my brain, along with V. Bush\'s Memex.  The idea of a continuum 
> >of text that
> >can be assembled objectively keeps coming back to haunt me. :)
> >
> >The way I see it, creating \"active essays\" and things like Nelson\'s
> >hyper-documents are great!  But we also need some way to translate that into a
> >more traditional medium as well.  For me, LaTeX is an interesting
> >medium...almost a textual \"Model\".  I write my documentation, I 
> >mark it up, and
> >I create a \"View\" that I want from it--usually HTML (latex2html) or PDF
> >(pdflatex).  Or, I can view it \"native\" (DVI).
> >
> >The SWiki illustrates a wonderful concept as well...when I create a page, it
> >creates an object that I can reference and link to from anywhere, by 
> >just using
> >the name of that page.  It\'s almost like working in that continuum 
> >of text I was
> >talking about earlier.
> >
> >So my question...are there any thoughts on this subject?  Has anyone else
> >pondered the usage of Squeak for document and book writing?
> >
> >
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> 
> --