Re: [Groff] Typesetting Markup Language (TML) - a Superset of Groff

[Larry Kollar]

> Steffen Nurpmeso <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> Or plain SGML that i think could use <tagname/almost any text you
>> like/.  I think plain SGML is still an interesting language, much
>> better than what XML made of it.

Aha, I was trying to remember that <scarequote/shortcut/> in SGML. XML 
explicitly
removed all the shortcuts, and introduced the concept of “well-formed” vs.
validated, to make parsers easier to write. IIRC, James Clark wrote the only 
open-
source SGML parser around, and it didn’t support the full syntax. By contrast,
there are XML parsers in just about every language out there including awk.

But getting back to TML for a moment, I think balancing brackets is important. 
If
for no other reason, to avoid confusing syntax-highlighting text editors that 
expect
such. 

> Yves Cloutier <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> The problem it didn't address was styling my document or other formatting
> options for a book I was working on. Markdown and friends are great for
> providing a certain level of document structure, however they don't - to my
> knowledge - provide any facility for specifying document or text styling or
> more complicated document structure.

That’s the whole point. ;-) Markdown, and most XML-based systems, deliberately
kick the formatting can down the road so you can focus on your content. The 
trick
is trusting the back-end will give you the output you need. I was aiming toward
mostly structural markup in the Groff-based system I used at work for several
years, so I could produce decent HTML when the time came. My problem was
trying too hard for perfect, instead of accepting “good enough” like everyone 
else.

— Larry