Re: How could a typesetting system be today?

[Maurí­cio <briqueabraque@yahoo.com>]

 >> The reason for a standard tag language is that the main engine
 >> should be able to do some operations on data, like breaking it
 >> in pieces like words, paragraphs or staffs on music scores,
 >> sometimes without fully understanding what exactly those are.
 >>
 >> Possible outcomes: with a proper script language (Lua?), things
 >> like tables, multi-column text, and even a lot of crazy ideas
 >> could be really easy to write. Plug-ins results would be
 >> predictable, since they know nothing about the world except
 >> what the main engine has informed them.
 >
 >
 > As far as I can judge, music typesetting has completely
 > different rules than text typesetting.

Sure.

 >
 > Ok, you would "just" use another plugin.  But then the plugins
 > need a way to interact: captions in graphics (like in MetaPost
 > today), lyrics in music etc.

That's the idea. I do believe it's possible.

 >
 > I myself wouldn't probably able to handle a MetaPost based
 > system (or something similar) - even if I "speak" a bit of
 > PostScript, I just don't think of graphics as formulae:

Myself, I never touch my computer mouse :)

I did read an answer from Donald Knuth on why he thinks Metafont
never became a popular tool for font creation. His answer: you
can't ask an artist to become enough of a mathematician in order
to be able to design his font based on 60 variables.

 > However, you need different parsers for different types of
 > content

A system like what I want should have a common language for
all. I'm not smart enough to say which one.

 > (I don't speak Lisp. I don't speak TeX-the-language or Lua as
 > well. But the latter seems easy.)

Yes, it is easy and powerfull. And it was created here in Brazil!
(Proud smile)

 > There is your unified system. XML rulez - for better or for
 > worse. It's really no fun to write XML by hand.

But, as you said, TeX and Lilypond have a similar syntax. I belive
they could share some kind of common language.

 > Perhaps you should try to help enhancing OpenOffice's typesetting? #
 > Or Scribus?

I really would like something we could program, and then change
design variables at will.

Thanks for your comments. I have no knowledge to go beyond
what I went in my first message.

Best,
Maurício

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