I agree with Steve on this. LaTeX is just a markup language for mathematical content. for most written things it is overkill, and there are definitely projects like the more XML based PreTeXt that offer huge improvements over vanilla LaTeX implementations. But LaTeX does what it does, hyper specific typeset  and math, it does very well. It also is capable of some interesting accessibility things such as a nemeth braille output that it has over WYSISYG editors. 

Sam

> On Jul 20, 2023, at 17:19, McDonald, Stephen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with that description of LaTeX.  LaTeX is more concerned with formatting than style.  LaTeX says, "this is the title", "this is a footnote", "this is a quotation block", "this is a chapter", "this is a sidebar note".  The actual style that is used for a title, a footnote, or a quotation block is defined separately, and layout on a page is done in end-processing.  I don't see any way you could separate those format blocks from the text to be blocked out.  Am I misunderstanding you?
> 
>                    Steve McDonald
>                    [log in to unmask]
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Stuart A.
>> Yeates
>> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 4:49 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [External] Re: [CODE4LIB] What manner of creature is LaTeX?
>> 
>> LaTeX is a little like PostScript and Excel with autorun scripts: formats conceived
>> and developed prior to the software development insight that separation of
>> content and code need to be separate.
>> 
>> Nowadays it is accepted that content should be split into text and style, but
>> way back when, there wasn't even a consensus for the split between content
>> and code.
>> 
>> cheers
>> stuart
>