[DOC-SIG] Comparing SGML DTDs

[David Ascher]

> 	Aha!  What prevented you from moving to TIM?  Just the work
> required to convert everything, or are there pieces still missing?
> For the record, I also really like TIM; it's simple enough to be
> easily processed, but you can escape into TeX if required.  TIM, via
> Texinfo, provides functions for defining class methods and the like:
>
> @defmethod @r{hashing objects} copy ()
> Return a separate copy of this hashing object.  An @code{update} to this
>   copy won't affect the original object.
> @end defmethod

For the record, while we're at it -- TIM is what I used for the Numeric
Tutorial (which will be updated, promise, someday).  It worked pretty
well.  It's not all that different from LaTeX as far as the user's
experience is concerned, except that it's a better match to Python (e.g.
underscores, etc.).

I didn't try hard to get all the references, indexing, etc., right -- I
certainly didn't try to get the @node system working well, since I don't
think "real" info use was going to happen.  I'm not sure how easy it would
be to make it do all we'd need.  It'd be good to investigate how to
generate WinHelp files (better than the current solution, which creates a
lousy table of contents). 

Overall, once I got it working (I had some configuration problems Bill
helped me with), it worked well.  The Numeric tutorial is available in
HTML, tex/dvi/postscript, as well as in a very readable text only form,
which I think is quite pleasant.  See

	http://starship.skyport.net/~da/Python/Numeric

for the "published versions" and

	http://starship.skyport.net/~da/Python/Numeric/array.tim

for one of the TIM source files, if you want a look.

--david



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