Re: HTML versions of the HDL proposal

Paul Burchard (burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu)
Thu, 24 Nov 94 21:50:10 EST

Jon_Bosak@Novell.COM (Jon Bosak) writes:
> The best way to avoid multiple incompatible delivery
> languages and the loss of interoperability is to
> standardize on one system of markup capable of
> expressing the complete range of typographical effects
> needed for cross-platform online display and to convert
> to this delivery format from other languages optimized
> for authoring or domain-specific retrieval. This
> proposal leverages an existing standard, SDL, that is
> already available to serve as the basis for a common Web
> delivery language.

One question: is HDL sufficiently powerful to serve as a delivery
medium for mathematical and technical documents written in TeX?

In the current situation, such documents are typically served over
the Web as (1) PostScript [converted from DVI], (2) Hyper-TeX [really
hyper-DVI; requires modified DVI previewers], and/or (3) TeX source
[a big hassle!]. In the future, option (1) could migrate to Acrobat
documents, converted from Hyper-DVI to include hyperlinks.

Because TeX has dramatically raised the standards of typography for
technical manuscripts, any successful alternative delivery system
must have the ability to approach the same level of quality. I would
be curious whether you see HDL playing a role there.

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Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
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