Re: SUO: Printing CL Abstract Syntax Document

["John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>]

John and Chris,

Perhaps the problems may be caused by the
installed fonts (or lack thereof).  I have
had good luck with Netscape 7.x in printing
and displaying the HTML 4.0 math and logic
characters under both Windows and Linux.

Perhaps it might help to browse a file
under Netscape 7.x and then to save it
from the browser.  I noticed that process
tends to convert the symbolic characters
to the numeric Unicode form.  Then it
might be possible to print it or to
import it into other tools that don't
recognize the HTML conventions.

But I find all of this extremely frustrating.
Twenty years ago (in June of 1983 to be exact),
I formatted my Conceptual Structures book using
GML (the predecessor to SGML) on an IBM mainframe.

That formatter gave me far more complete control
over the formats, fonts, layouts, etc., than any
word processor I have ever encountered.  Even today,
MS Word is nowhere near as flexible or as powerful
as the old IBM GML processor of 1983.

What I find most frustrating is that the pointy
haired bosses at IBM abandoned GML in favor of
WYSIWYG word processors.  Then a couple of guys
in a garage at CERN took over the leadership
of the approach that IBM pioneered.

I have nothing against giving WYSIWYG to the
masses, as long as the output is something that
the experts can process further if they wish.
But the worst property of WYSIWYG is that it ends
up as WYSIAYG -- What You See Is All You Get.

John