[erlang-questions] Erlang Language Specification

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 1/12/17 6:33 AM, Anthony Ramine wrote:
> The most important part of a spec isn't the verbosity of its few mathematical formulas when editing, it's good cross-reference linking, internally in externally. The format that excels at that is HTML. There are various ways to have mathematical formulas in HTML.

I agree that good cross-referencing is very important.

The cross-referencing you can get with good literate programming tools
is *awesome*.  Look at the TeXBook for an example, or the book about
lcc 
https://www.amazon.com/Retargetable-Compiler-Design-Implementation/dp/0805316701

I've seen four methods used to get mathematical formulas into HTML:
- format using (La)TeX and paste in as an image
   (yuck)
- use MathML
   (I have made repeated attempts to do this myself.
   Much struggle for poor results.)
- use some fancy WYSIWYG tool and have it generate something
   (WYSINWIS : what you see is not what I see)
- use MathJax
   this seems to work pretty well.
   It reminds me of Professor CleverByte's Visit to Heaven...

Given that PDF supports intra- and inter-document links and text
search, I don't see an advantage for HTML here.