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Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?
From: |
Marcin Borkowski |
Subject: |
Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug? |
Date: |
Wed, 28 Dec 2022 07:40:26 +0100 |
User-agent: |
mu4e 1.1.0; emacs 29.0.50 |
On 2022-12-27, at 10:00, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 08:21:28AM +0100, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> > At first it seems surprising that there are those two perspectives
>> > and there's no "right" or "wrong", as the OP seems to assume.
>>
>> FWIW, I think LaTeX also got this "wrong" (and perhaps surprisingly, XML
>> "right";-)). AFAIR, ConTeXt (which I haven't used for several years, so
>> I might be mistaken) does "TRT" here.
>
> LaTeX picked it up from TeX which picked it up from... print (more
Hm. It's been decades since I used plain TeX on a daily basis, so
I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me that plain TeX doesn't even
have sectioning macros...
> specifically from academic print). Which has been optimised for a
> couple o'hundred years.
Well, yes, though one might argue that it's only a local optimum;-).
> Donald Knuth was mathematician and computer scientist (and pretty
> fastidious with the smalles details), so I'd assume his choice of
> this "flavour" of document model for TeX was pretty conscious, not
> an accident.
Actually, this is much stronger argument than it might seem.
>> OTOH, I agree that it looks surprising, and we mathematicians (and CS/IT
>> people) would like to have a nice, tree-like structure, but I suspect
>> that not allowing to continue the parent section after the subsection
>> ends is a wise decision. I highly suspect this would be very confusing
>> for 99% people, which might be precisely the benefit the OP is asking
>> about.
>
> You might not like it -- but I stay by my assessment that there isn't
> a "right" or "wrong" here.
Well, I was a bit tongue-in-cheek here - I meant "right" in the
mathematician/computer scientist mind, which is, let's say, a very
peculiar type of mind...
> The most important thing, IMHO, is to be aware of those two models
> (most of us stumble unexpectedly into it and go "WAT?" -- although
> it has made it to the FAQ by now :)
>
> It isn't difficult to model the one with the other. I already proposed
> having one canonical heading meaning "back to that level", say dash
> or dot, like so:
>
> * General animals
> Some text about general animals
>
> ** arthropods
> spiders and things
>
> * -
> More about animals in general
>
> ** vertebrates
> so-and-so
>
> (You could even do with the space alone, but playing with significant
> trailing spaces is asking for trouble: i'd go for some unobtrusive char
> unlikely to be a heading text for itself).
+1 for avoiding significant trailing spaces, and agreed.
> Now for that to be useful, you'd have to gather enough users who
> like the idea and use the convention. It's a communication medium,
> after all :-)
Fair point. And frankly, I find this unlikely to happen. As I said,
for me the main argument against "continuation sections" is that they
would probably be /extremely/ confusing to most readers.
Best,
--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl
- Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, abq, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, tomas, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Ihor Radchenko, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, abq, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, tomas, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Ihor Radchenko, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, tomas, 2022/12/26
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Marcin Borkowski, 2022/12/27
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, tomas, 2022/12/27
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?,
Marcin Borkowski <=
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Heinz Tuechler, 2022/12/28
- Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, tomas, 2022/12/28
Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Max Nikulin, 2022/12/26
Re: Is the cascading logic of outlines a feature, or a design bug?, Stefan Nobis, 2022/12/28