From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/8341 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Hans Hagen Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: A proposal for the sectioning commangs Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 12:45:00 +0200 Sender: owner-ntg-context@let.uu.nl Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20020623124349.034286a8@server-1> References: <1809370081.20020621154616@bigfoot.com> <1809370081.20020621154616@bigfoot.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035398753 26755 80.91.224.250 (23 Oct 2002 18:45:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 18:45:53 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Giuseppe Bilotta , ntg-context@ntg.nl Original-To: John Culleton In-Reply-To: <200206211127.50412.john@wexfordpress.com> Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:8341 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:8341 At 11:27 AM 6/21/2002 -0400, John Culleton wrote: >On Friday 21 June 2002 09:46 am, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote: > > Hello, > > > > one of the main features of both ConTeXt and LaTeX over plain TeX > > is their heavily "object-oriented" approach to source writing, > > giving a large set of useful tools to build well-structured > > documents. > > > > There is though one aspect which has not been addressed in either: > > structuring of the sections. One still uses \chapter, \section, > > \subsection etc to denote the start of any of these, while > > structured writing would call for \startchapter ... \stopchapter, > > \startsection ... \stopsection etc. > > >In my very humble opinion this is a big part of the problem with tools >such as XML and its children. Using two tags where one will do is just >excessive clutter, and ends up with lines like >\stopsubusubsection \stopsubsection \stopsection \stopchapter >.... which is all superfluous code and offers the chance for keying errors on >every tag. The computer is smart enough to know that a \chapter head >terminates all previous subordinate levels. And the person reading the code >is smart enough too. I see no virtue in this proposal. > >No matter how elegant the code looks, in fact it is just a means to an end, >and the end is a publication, and all those meaningless stop tabs won't >afffect the final document in any case. a \start/stop option would be an extension, not a replacement, so you can still code minimal; also, the stop thing is really needed for more complex layouts since we need trigger points Hans ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------