as you remember, some time ago, we (Euromath Support Center people - from
Bratislava) were interested in Thot editor and we were exploring the
situation around progress in its developement (XML support, better font
handling, etc.). The reason was to make analysis of transformation the
Euromath System (EM) from Grif/GATE into Thot. The detailed comparision of
Grif/GATE and Thot SW enviroments (user functions, languages and APIs) was
done.
During these last days the situation has changed. Out committee of
management ultimately has decided to transform EM into Thot. The result
system - extension of Thot editor will be put into public domain.
I (Rado Cervenka) became manager of the transformation project (EM2Thot) and
we are in the initiation phase now. All (or almost all) tasks have been
identified and in these days we are looking for human resources -
programmers and consultants. Project plan will be done soon. The project
will take about one year (I guess).
Here are our main aims:
SGML/XML support
you mentioned about extension of Thot towards XML. So, my questions
are: how far is your work now ? Can you give me an estimation of
finishing date of this work ? Can you outline me principles (also
details if you want) of XML supporting ? For instance: will you make
compiler of DTD into S, default P and XML saving T schemas or will
you support XML directly ? How will you deal with character entities
and definitions of new alphabets (using specific character data
entities of SDATA type) ? (The last question has to do with the next
item - the font server.)
Support of XML is very important for us (and not only us).
Take into consideration that, please !
Font Server
this mechanism has to do with user defined fonts for X and for
printing also. An user can for given alphabet (defined for example
by a set of SDATA entities in DTD) and font description (family
name, slant and size) map an arbitrary X font (given by XLFD), Post
Script font and Post Script metrics. We plan to do "font server
patch" of Thot editor. After its instalation, can Thot editor (or
maybe another Thot application) exploit its functionality.
Listener
an API functions supporting communication between Thot application
and another processes (by files/pipes).
Transformation of existing EM schemas and applications
EM will be available as patch of Thot editor sources and after its
installing an user will obtain the whole functionality of the
current EM system vers. 2, e.g. convinient math formulas editing
(with many fonts and good presentation), TeX <-> XML interactive
translation, X.500 interface, URL support in documents, MATH
Database (DB of mathematics abstracts) interface, e-mail sender of
created documents, etc.
Interface to computer algebra systems
implementation of OPEN Math interface. But, this is only in the
future. Not the main goal for this time.
Do you think would be above mentioned features interested for you, or for
further developement of Thot ? Give me your opinion, please.
But the main reason for this email is the question:
ARE YOU WILLING TO CO-OPERATE WITH US ?
We will need to have experts of Thot's sources and used principles. As I've
seen, you are such experts whose we will need. Co-operation with you can
speed-up the process of implementation and I think, we both (EM and Thot
developers) could gain from it.
Let me know soon about your opinions and decision, please. Thanks.
Yours,
Radovan Cervenka.
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* Euromath Support Center *
* Department of Computer Science *
* Faculty of Mathematics and Physics *
* Comenius University *
* Mlynska dolina *
* 842 15 Bratislava *
* Slovak Republic *
* *
* Tel: +421-7-654 26 635 Fax: +421-7-654 27 041 *
* e-mail: emt@fmph.uniba.sk *
* http://www.dcs.fmph.uniba.sk/~emt *
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