Subject:
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The way of the Math Geek (was Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.faq, lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Mon, 19 Jul 1999 19:09:35 GMT
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Viewed:
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5679 times
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In lugnet.faq, Todd Lehman writes:
> Say, I wonder if math-geeks have a strong natural affinity toward custom
> tools like that? Why design a special tool and a custom markup when HTML
> already exists? Answer: Because it's easy, more pleasant to work with for
> lots of semi-complex body text, and hey, making up new special-purpose
> notations from scratch (as appropriate) is just a way of life in mathematics,
> so it's a perfectly normal thing to do.
I actually believe my main reason for doing it was that I had to create
hundreds of pages of HTML, and I didn't trust any of the "HTML authoring tools"
to do what I wanted. Basically, I thought other people's tools would have bugs
or idiosyncracies and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of learning the
tools.
> What did you use for superscript and subscript? Those all come out so nicely
> on your pages!
I didn't mention that because I figured we wouldn't need it for the FAQs. I
denote a superscript like this:
2^{6} to represent 2 followed by a superscript "6"
x^{(x^{(y-1)})} to represent "x" followed by "(x" in superscript,
followed by "(y-1)" in double superscript, followed by ")" in superscript
subscripts are done in a similar way but instead of "^" I use a "v".
For completeness I'll also mention that I have a syntax for tables (another
thing I don't think you'll want to use, but who knows :-). To start and end a
table you use "<table>" and "</table>" (I didn't see the point in making
special symbols for that). You separate table rows with "-" by itself on a
line, and you separate items within a row by "|" with blank space on either
side. Any extra blank spaces next to a "|" get automatically deleted, so if you
want you can make your table line up nicely in ASCII like this (click on "View
Raw Message" or switch to a monospace font, please):
<table>
Part # | Description | Color
-
3001 | 2 x 4 brick | trans red
-
ld3660 | 2 x 2 45^{o} inverted roof brick | blue
-
32133 | *CyberSlam* projectile | teal
</table>
Notice the use of other tags within table items. The sharp sign "#" in the
first item is left alone by my script because it isn't part of a valid boldface
tag (it would need to be adjacent to non-white space and there would have to be
a second # sign somewhere else on the line).
> [...]
> Here are some related (and admittedly biased) thoughts on that general topic,
> from another thread in another newsgroup earlier this month:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=1977
I like where you went in this message, and the use of matching pairs of markers
can be useful to help people see where the bold and italics begin and end. For
example, in my current system, a line like the following is a little hard to
read (although my script has no problem translating it):
*This #sentence* has# overlapping styles.
Also in my system it's easy to inadvertantly leave a * or # out which results
in all the following lines being in boldface or italics. (My script could be a
little smarter to fix this)
The advantage I see of my system is that it leaves [ ] and { } free for other
uses, specifically superscript/subscript and labeled HREFs. In fact, my system
uses almost every character for multiple uses and I suggest that is the way to
go for your system.
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=1983
The only comment I have here is that it would be good to adopt "(r)" and "(c)"
as symbols that get converted into "®" and "©". The "TM" symbol would
of course be "^{TM}" using the existing superscript notation (-:
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=2034 *
When you talk about "upgrading" pages, the comment I have is, if you ever
changed the markup symbols in an incompatible manner, you could convert all the
existing pages to HTML and then convert back to ASCII using the new rules. I
have also written a text-only web browser and of course I used the same
notation to represent web pages as plain ASCII text. The algorithms are just as
simple in either direction.
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=2144
I really like the use of | to denote text in monospace fonts and the <pre>
</pre> type thing. It could actually be added to my system without conflict.
> The big question is: Is something like that sufficiently powerful to handle
> FAQ stuff...? And I think it is...at least for ~99% of anything anyone would
> ever want to write. [...]
I agree -- I'm even reluctant to suggest adding the table operators because I
think it might result in overuse in FAQs. However, since you want to use the
same symtax for member pages, I guess you should include them.
> [...] [for] link syntax [...]
> I was thinking of the exact same character (only with reversed left &
> right portions):
>
> <www.mrob.com|Robert Munafo's Home Page>
I put the "label" portion before the "URL" portion because you read the label
first and *then* go to the URL. But I agree it works almost as well the other
way.
> [...] If something is written as:
>
> <http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/5_BNF.html|Uniform Resource Locators:BNF>
>
> then, even though | (vline) isn't part of a valid URL, Netscape mail (and
> likely MSOE as well) displays everything up through the end of the word
> "Uniform" as a hyperlink. It's certainly an unfortunate bug in Netscape's
> mail reader, but for practical reasons on those grounds, it's really worth
> considering something other than | as the separator (for this LUGNET purpose).
You can probably fix this by allowing the user to put blank space on either
side of the | character. You need to allow blank space anyway. If that doesn't
work, try using a different character-pair in place of < >.
> [...] Although a space is somewhat less "clean" and less readable than |,
> it has the advantage that the text-line can be auto-wrapped more nicely
> by typical text editors, [...]
Thats the main reason why I allow blank space.
> [...] my sister is in the process of convincing me not to use
> [[Foo]] and [[[Foo]]] for headings but instead to use
>
> Foo foo foo
> ===========
> [...]
I like those better than my own system. It takes a little more work for the
script, though, because it has to count the "=" characters to figure out what
part of the previous line goes inside <H1>.
- Robert Munafo
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: [faq FAQ How do I format an entry in the Lugnet FAQ?]
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| (...) Hee hee! COOL! Say, I wonder if math-geeks have a strong natural affinity toward custom tools like that? Why design a special tool and a custom markup when HTML already exists? Answer: Because it's easy, more pleasant to work with for lots of (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jul-99, to lugnet.faq)
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