[ANN] Skribilo 0.9.4 released

[Ludovic Courtès]

I am pleased to announce version 0.9.4 of Skribilo, a schemey document
authoring system.

http://dl.sv.nongnu.org/releases/skribilo/skribilo-0.9.4.tar.gz
http://dl.sv.nongnu.org/releases/skribilo/skribilo-0.9.4.tar.gz.sig

The SHA1 sums for these two files are:

25d8fffea69258e3023efc34cc17470d703949dc skribilo-0.9.4.tar.gz
f2f23e37bacaeda9de3fe02ea8c65f6e83614b36 skribilo-0.9.4.tar.gz.sig

Documentation is available at:

https://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/

Skribilo is a free document production tool that takes a structured
document representation as its input and renders that document in a
variety of output formats: HTML and Info for on-line browsing, and Lout,
LaTeX or ConTeXt for high-quality hard copies.

The input document can use Skribilo’s markup language to provide
information about the document’s structure, which is similar to HTML or
LaTeX and does not require expertise. Alternatively, it can use a
simpler, “markup-less” format that borrows from Emacs’ outline mode and
from other conventions used in emails, Usenet, and text.

Skribilo can be thought of as a document programming framework for the
Scheme programming language that may be used to automate a variety of
document generation tasks. It uses GNU Guile 2.x or 1.8 as the
underlying Scheme implementation.

Skribilo is a follow-up to Manuel Serrano’s and Érick Gallesio’s
Skribe (thank you!). It is based on the code base of Skribe 1.2d
but differs in important ways.

Excerpt from the ‘NEWS’ file:

* New in Skribilo 0.9.4

** Skribilo now runs on Guile 2.2 (in addition to 2.0 and 1.8)
** HTML engine: do not emit <strong> and <big>

It used to do so for titles and slide titles, which interfered with CSS
customization in addition to being so 1990.

** New style for the HTML user manual, rely on CSS

Items such as markup documentation are now rendered as CSS. The whole
web site and user manual style has been overhauled thanks to Amirouche
Boubekki.

** Improved Lout style of the user manual
** acmproc: "References" chapter is now unnumbered
** New Friulian and Brazilian Portuguese translations

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[Pierre Neidhardt]

This must be the computer program I've been waiting for the longest time!
(Roughly 10 years...)

After too much fighting with the idyosyncracies of LaTeX, I had been
thinking of a document processing language with a similar design:
programmable with a clean separation between the input and output
drivers. I never went down to realize the project though, so seeing it
happening now is like a dream coming true :)

(Although after further reading it seems like similar projects have been
under development since the 2000s at least).

I'll try it out soon. In the mean time, a few questions:

1. Is there any procedural graphics capability? Here I'm thinking TikZ,
Asymptote, etc. TikZ turns "programming" into a much dreaded nightmare
and while Asymptote makes it a bit more approachable, it still suffers
from a language that has more ill-designed "features" than C++.

2. What about page formatting capabilities? Can Skribilo generate, say,
a letter?

3. How is it related to other GNU projects? Is it used anywhere?

4. Skribilo's manual is available in HTML / PDF format, but not in
Info. Strange, is there a good reason for it? I like Info :)

5. This seems to be in direct competition with Racket's Scribble (which
I haven't really tested either). Is there a good reason for not merging
the two projects? What are the differences between the two?

6. I didn't know about Lout: the project page is rather empty and the
description very scarce. If I understand correctly, it's an alternative
to TeXlive as a PDF rendering backend. If so, then it's a brilliant
initiative, I find TeXlive so bloated it is hardly manageable.

7. As for Lout, I had never heard of Skribilo before. Maybe it's just
me... But I think it would be worth reaching out for a broader
audience. The vast majority of the academia has been stuck with LaTeX
for too long, I can hear the far cries of too many people begging for
some progress! :D

--
Pierre Neidhardt

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

(Replying to everyone, but we should probably strip the Cc: list afterwards.)

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
This must be the computer program I've been waiting for the longest time!
(Roughly 10 years...)

Heheh. :-)

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
1. Is there any procedural graphics capability? Here I'm thinking TikZ,
Asymptote, etc. TikZ turns "programming" into a much dreaded nightmare
and while Asymptote makes it a bit more approachable, it still suffers
from a language that has more ill-designed "features" than C++.

No, there’s no such thing. There’s a high-level pie chart package that
simply generates Lout or Ploticus code currently, but that’s about it.

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
2. What about page formatting capabilities? Can Skribilo generate, say,
a letter?

No, it just relies on Lout or LaTeX/ConTeXT to do that. All it does is
generate code for these.

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
3. How is it related to other GNU projects? Is it used anywhere?

I don’t think it’s much used by other projects. :-)

Now, with an improved backend plus a Texinfo frontend (a “reader” in
Skribilo parlance, which could use Guile’s stexi modules), it could
become an option for some existing manuals.

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
4. Skribilo's manual is available in HTML / PDF format, but not in
Info. Strange, is there a good reason for it? I like Info :)

If you install it, you’ll get the Info manual. But note that the Info
backend still leaves a lot to be desired.

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
5. This seems to be in direct competition with Racket's Scribble (which
I haven't really tested either). Is there a good reason for not merging
the two projects? What are the differences between the two?

The two projects are similar in spirit, yes. I think Scribble is a bit
younger but it’s also more widely used and maybe more featureful
nowadays. Scribble uses Racket, Skribilo uses Guile, and there are some
differences (for example, I think the document processing phases work
differently.) But anyway, you tell me!

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
6. I didn't know about Lout: the project page is rather empty and the
description very scarce. If I understand correctly, it's an alternative
to TeXlive as a PDF rendering backend. If so, then it's a brilliant
initiative, I find TeXlive so bloated it is hardly manageable.

Lout is the only practical purely functional document layout system that
I know of, and yes, it’s not very well know. The implementation has a
few shortcomings though, in particular that of not supporting Unicode.

Post by Pierre Neidhardt
7. As for Lout, I had never heard of Skribilo before. Maybe it's just
me... But I think it would be worth reaching out for a broader
audience. The vast majority of the academia has been stuck with LaTeX
for too long, I can hear the far cries of too many people begging for
some progress! :D

I’d say that Skribilo is on the same level as Docbook, but not really on
the same level as LaTeX: it doesn’t do any of the low-level layout
stuff. That said, it’s usually simpler to work with, though because it
“compiles” to LaTeX/Lout, you also occasionally have to be aware of
these lower-level tools.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.