1 \documentclass[onecolumn ]{article}
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6 \author{ Chris Houser\\ chouser@bluweb.com }
8 \section{What is \TeX MLapis?}
9 \TeX MLapis translates \TeX ML documents into \TeX{}.\par{}
10 \section{What good is \TeX ML?}
11 \LaTeX \footnote{\href{http://www.latex-project.org/}{http://www.latex-project.org/}}
13 number of very tricky things. These include formatting mathematical
14 formulae, laying out out books and articles, typesetting text and tables in
15 a pleasing and consistant manner, etc. However, XML is good at a number of
16 things \LaTeX{} is {\em{}not} so good at, such as being easily parsed and
17 translated into a variety of output formats.\par{}
18 Unfortunately, the standard XML transformation system XSL\footnote{\href{http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/}{http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/}}
19 is not powerful enough to
20 translate from normal XML formats to \LaTeX{} directly. So when you use XML
21 to edit, store, and distribute your source documents, \TeX ML provides the
22 bridge you need to leverage the power of \LaTeX{} when formatting your
23 document for the printed page.\par{}
24 The DTD and other documentation about \TeX ML\footnote{\href{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}}
27 alphaWorks\footnote{\href{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}}. My interpretation of their software license does not allow
28 me to redistribute those materials here.\par{}
29 \section{\TeX MLapis vs. \TeX MLatte}
30 There is already a \TeX ML-to-\TeX{} translator called \TeX MLatte\footnote{\href{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}{http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/formula/texml}}, but I
31 was completely unable to get it to work. It's written in Java\footnote{\href{http://java.sun.com/}{http://java.sun.com/}}
32 and the perhaps the runtime engines I
33 have around are drastically sub-standard or something, but for whatever
34 reason I could not get their tool to run. Also, the software license for
35 \TeX MLatte is rather less community-oriented than the GPL, so I thought a
36 new implementation was in order.\par{}
37 \TeX MLapis is written in pure Perl 5 and requires nothing but a standard
38 Perl\footnote{\href{http://www.cpan.org/ports/}{http://www.cpan.org/ports/}}
39 interpreter. It has it's own
40 little XML parser built in. Of course in order for it to be useful you'll
41 need at least \LaTeX{} and almost certainly an XSLT processor as well. It was
42 written entirely without reference
43 to the \TeX MLatte code, which I have never even seen, so there shouldn't
44 be any copyright entanglements. I cannot guarantee that it will produce
46 identical to \TeX MLatte, but it has worked well enough for my purposes and
47 seems to comply with available specs and examples.\par{}
48 \section{How to get it}
49 This page documents texmlapis-1.1.tar.gz\footnote{\href{http://bluweb.com/chouser/proj/texmlapis/texmlapis-1.1.tar.gz}{http://bluweb.com/chouser/proj/texmlapis/texmlapis-1.1.tar.gz}},
50 but you can always find the latest version at \TeX MLapis\footnote{\href{http://bluweb.com/chouser/proj/texmlapis}{http://bluweb.com/chouser/proj/texmlapis}}.\par{}