[Blindmath] Mark up languages VS wysiwyg editors: was: Re: Press Release: MathType 6.5 for Windows is available

[Jason White]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 12:25:55PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> One of the most common complaints about LaTeX is that it is hard to  
> learn. Is this true or is it as Jason said about the Linux command line  
> (quite some time in the past and I am not quite sure where) only because  
> we tend to be introduced to Windows and get so much into the Windows GUI  
> way (he was saying that in cases where people learn the Linux command  
> line from the beginning it appears to be easier than Windows)? So could  
> the teaching of LaTeX at an early stage (something in the past I said  
> possibly not due to the time spent on it if they may not go on to use it  
> again, I probably now mean even earlier than I was thinking in the past)  
> would this actually be benefitial?

I suspect so, and the comments you mentioned from an earlier discussion would
apply equally well to LaTeX as to the shell.

It should also be pointed out that LaTeX-aware editors such as the Auctex mode
of Emacs provide keyboard commands and tab completion for entering LaTeX
macros and environments, as well as menus for basic operations.

When I move away from LateX, it will probably be toward some form of XML, with
a syntax-aware editor. The problem at the moment is that MathML is horribly
verbose to read and to type. One option, I suppose, would be a pre-processor
such as ITeX2MML that converts TeX-like mathematics to MathML. Docbook appears
to be a fairly comprehensive and cleanly designed XML format, and Emacs, among
other editors, provides a good XML editing facility.