[Wikipedia-l] Parsing TeX

[Toby Bartels]

Jan Hidders wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>And are they going to know that if we tell them that $$ invokes LaTeX?
>>They'll know if we tell them to put $$ around variable names.

>People don't read manuals, they first look in other articles how it is done
>there.

One of the first pages that I looked at was
[[Wikipedia:How does one edit a page]].
I didn't edit any pages seriously until reading that.
Not everybody is like this, but some people are.
Now, if I hadn't known TeX already,
I wouldn't have been heartened to see a reference to it.
What do you propose to write there?

>>>  .. let $$v<sub>1</sub>$$, ..., $$v<sub>n</sub>$$ be a finite list ..

>>There are many versions of "my notation" around, but this is none of them.

>This is how the mark-up you suggested could be used. Perhaps it is not how you
>would like it to be used, but it's still your notatation. But whether you
>want people to write $$x$$<sub>$$n$$</sub> or $$x<sub>n</sub>$$ is not
>really to the point anyway.

The point is that you keep criticising "my notation",
but you don't seem to have any idea what that is.
If the notation above had been suggested by a third party,
I would have argued against it.

>>  .. let <var>v</var><sub>1</sub>, ...,
>>  <var>v</var><sub><var>n</var></sub> be a finite list ..

>>This is what I write now, and the HTML that we should produce.

>Says who? I don't agree, even apart from the question whether we should
>support <var> at all (<var> was not included in HTML to write mathematical
>variables), but since it is not relevant for this discussion I'm
>going to save that for later.

I didn't think that that was a controversial statement anymore;
the only controversy being if the distinction was important enough.
If you argue that <i> is truly correct and <var> is not,
then this has an effect on *my* outlook on the matter, at least.

>>We can't say "Put [$ and $] around a math expression to call LaTeX.",
>>because it isn't that difficult, and people won't want to try it.

>I assume "difficult" -> "simple"? For simple math you only need to know
>what [$ x_n $] does and maybe not even that if you don't use subscripts.

That's why I say that it's *not* that difficult.
You don't have to know very much to do this, as you just pointed out,
yet the direction that I wrote makes it seem as if you do.
If I didn't know LaTeX already, I'd question whether or not
I want to get involved in a project that seems to demand that I know it
(assuming that I want to edit math articles, which I do).

>>Do you want to write up all of the LaTeX that we use?

>No, I don't intend to do that all by myself. :-) The request for LaTeX is an
>old one and has been made several times. I know several people who write
>mathematics in Wikipedia who cannot wait to get their hands on this. There's
>no doubt that it will be used.

You don't have to convince me that it would be useful, and used.
I'm one of the people that has voiced support for the idea,
and I'm one of the people that would certainly use it, given the opportunity.
I'm just having trouble seeing how it can be implementd in a user friendly way.


-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>