Re: SILE 0.9.0 is released

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Monday, September 1, 2014, Simon Cozens <simon@simon-cozens.org> wrote:
> On 01/09/2014 17:51, Andrew Starks wrote:
> > Render to bitmaps? What does that workflow look like?
>
> Thanks Andrew! No direct support for rendering to bitmaps but adding it is
> super easy:
> 1) Familiarise yourself with core/cairo-output.lua
> 2) Create a SILE.outputters.cairoBitmap which subclasses SILE.outputters.cairo, overriding the init, newpage and finish methods.
> 3) SILE.outputter = SILE.outputters.cairoBitmap
> 4) That's it.
>
> > Vector graphics
> > (something like PGF/ TikZ, also heavily Lua-based)?
>
> That would be quite fun, wouldn't it? You have the Cairo drawing primitives
> available, and the cassowary constraint solver, so you can do some really interesting stuff with this. I look forward to seeing your packages!

PGF is not my package. It's only an example and if you're not familiar with it, please check it out, if only to read a little of the very best documentation that I have ever seen for any product in any jndustry. :)

 http://www.texample.net/media/pgf/builds/pgfmanualCVS2012-11-04.pdf

> > Thoughts about bridging to
> > / from the CTAN packages world? Thoughts on how it compares to ConTeX (and to
> > a lesser extent LaTeX 3)...
>
> In a way I wish I hadn't mentioned TeX, but that's the easiest way for people to get a handle on what SILE does. :-) I don't think that CTAN support is going to be possible because this deliberately *isn't* a TeX; it's a different typesetting system. Even though there's a lot of good stuff on CTAN, actually I think there's quite a lot to be gained from breaking compatibility and moving on. TeX's macro language is one of its least pleasant features; nobody wants to be programming in TeX if they don't have to!

There are many macro packages built on TeX. Nothing that I know of that challenges it, except this. 

A very interesting idea and again, thank you! 

> S