Le matematiche (libro)

@libri - La matematica è la stessa, ma la scuola russa la vede in modo diverso

https://wp.me/p6hcSh-9ds

@zwol I wrote a book in Docbook (SGML first, and then converted to XML later) about 25ish years ago, with a custom vim configuration. It wasn't pleasant. Yes, the tools were bad, but also it's just really sort of tiring looking at all the tags and the processing toolchain was dire.

I was using a LaTeX-based toolchain for the PDF generation, I don't remember details, but Sebastian Rahtz was super helpful when I ran into mysterious issues.

I wouldn't do it again. Different time, different me.

@jannem Yeah, like, considered as a thing-in-itself apart from the tools, the major complaint I have about DocBook is that the documentation of _how to write a book using DocBook_ is inadequate.

Many people have very similar complaints about LaTeX.

@Esoteria you might be a little too young for this classic scene from "WKRP in Cincinnati".

https://youtu.be/hhbqIJZ8wCM

@molly0xfff At first I thought it was about wikipedia socks, the puppet kind... lol

seriously, I blew this entire afternoon trying to pin down an xmllint error whose cause turned out to have absolutely nothing to do with the error messages it was giving me.

(Actual error: multiple elements with the same xml:id. Error message: "<chapter> not expected as child of <book>" or words to that effect.)

(Giving sensible error messages for multiply defined symbols is a compilers 101 exercise!)

@zwol
I used LaTeX throughout university. I never found XML significantly more cumbersome.

Current project number, um, 8? involves DocBook. Never had to do that before. Am now wondering just how much of the hate for XML, that I remember from the early 2010s, is down to the incredible shittiness of the tools for working with XML.