Re: [Docutils-develop] plan to add math support

[David G. <go...@py...>]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:16, Roberto Alsina
<ra...@ne...> wrote:
> David Goodger writes:
>
>> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 09:08, Guenter Milde <mi...@us...> wrote:
>>> Dear Docutils developers,
>>>
>>> after ``import this``, I read
>>>
>>>  Simple is better than complex.
>>>
>>>  There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
>>>
>>>  Now is better than never.
>>>
>>> and want to start implementing math support *now*.
>>
>> If you can include reasonable HTML output, +1.
>> If not (and you seem to indicate not), -1.
>>
>> If we can't improve the status quo, what's the point? LaTeX math
>> support exists already, via the "raw" directive at least. It's not
>> ideal, but it's explicit.
>
> Not only is it not ideal, it's broken.

Agreed. But without HTML support the proposed alternative is no less broken.

> rst2pdf has math support.
> sphinx has math support (also in HTML, and yes, jsMath is a pain)

Can these approaches be ported for generalized support?

I don't like the situation with Sphinx fragmentation/incompatibility.
Core functionality should be moved into core Docutils. Unfortunately I
don't have the time to drive this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Docutils "commit bit"
is widely available to anyone willing to take the responsibility to do
the job right. (See
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/dev/policies.html -- and that's
open to modification too.) If you don't already have the commit bit,
just ask!

> HTML support via images and matplotlib should not be terribly hard to
> implement, I am even willing to reluctantly offer to do it ;-)

Great!

> The same thing happens with the code-block directive. I have in rst2pdf a
> nice code-block that only requires pygments and works for every writer that
> supports inline text roles with colors and fonts, in case someone wants it,
> too ;-)

Sure, please!

-- 
David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>