@ -504,10 +504,14 @@ In the sample above, though you see formatting tags like @racket[background-colo
That said, I imagine that most users & developers are looking for PDF generation along the lines of ``don't make me think too hard.'' So I can foresee that @racket[quadwriter] (or a better version of it) will be the preferred interface.
Why? Decades of experience with HTML and its relations have acclimated us to the model of marking up a text with certain codes that denote layout, and then passing the markup to a program for output. So I think the idea of a Q-expression, and some vocabulary of markup tags will probably end up being the most natural and useful interface.
Why? Decades of experience with HTML and its relations have acclimated us to the model of marking up a text with certain codes that denote layout, and then passing the markup to a program for output. So I think the idea of a Q-expression, with some application-specific vocabulary of markup tags, will probably end up being the most natural and useful interface.
@margin-note{Historians of desktop word processors may remember that WordPerfect has a @onscreen{Reveal codes} feature which lets you drop into the markup that represents the formatting displayed in the GUI.}
Part of the idea of @racket[quad] is to make typographic layout & PDF generation a service that can be built into other Racket apps and languages. For simple jobs, you might reach for @racket[quadwriter] and make your Q-expressions using its tag vocabulary. For other jobs, you might reach for something else. For instance, I could imagine a @code{#lang résumé} that has a more limited markup vocabulary, optimized for churning out résumés with a simple layout. Or a @code{#lang tax-form} that has a more complex markup vocabulary that supports more detail and precision. As usual with domain-specific languages, we can create an interface that adjusts the level of control available to the end user, depending on what's suitable for the type of document being created.
