The mathematical notion of “category” in the context of markup languages raises the idea of widespread use of reliable automatic translations between markup languages.
LATEX profiles, which are dialects of LATEX with a fixed command vocabulary where all macro expansions must be effective in that vocabulary, are suitable domains for defining translations to other profiles and, where sensible, to other markup languages.
The construction of reliable translators from several journal-neutral LATEX profiles to many journal-specific LATEX profiles would eliminate the need for technical editing in the production flow for academic journals.
- William F. Hammond, “GELLMU: A Bridge for Authors from LATEX to XML”, TUGboat, vol. 22 (2001), no. 3, pp. 204–207; also available online at http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/ contents22-3.html.
- William F. Hammond, “Dual presentation with math from one source using GELLMU”, TUGboat, vol. 28 (2007), no. 3, pp. 306–311; also available online at http://www.tug.org/ TUGboat/Contents/contents28-3.html. A video recording of the presentation at TUG 2007, July 2007, in San Diego is available at http://zeeba.tv/conferences/tex/tug2007/.
- William F. Hammond, “Multipurpose LATEX-like markup for math”, talk given in the AMS-MAA Special Session Putting Math on the Web the Correct Way at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego in January 2008. This has not been published, but HTML slides that link to many examples are available on the web at http://math.albany.edu/math/pers/hammond/Presen/JMM08/Putting/.
