ŞäferTeX: Source Code Esthetics for Automated Typesetting

Abstract

While TeX [4] provides high quality typesetting features, its usability suffers due to its macro-based command language. Many tools have been developed over the years simplifying and extending the TeX interface, such as LaTeX [5], LaTeX3 [6], pdfTeX [2], and NTS [8]. Front-ends such as TeXmacs [10] follow the visual/graphical approach to facilitate the coding of documents. The system introduced in this paper, however, is radical in its targetting of optimized code appearance.

The primary goal of ŞäferTeX is to make the typesetting source code as close as possible to human-readable text, to which we have been accustomed over the last few centuries. Using indentation, empty lines and a few triggers allows one to express interruption, scope, listed items, etc. A minimized frame of ‘paradigms’ spans a space of possible typesetting commands. Characters such as ‘_’ and ‘$’ do not have to be backslashed. Transitions from one type of text to another are automatically detected, with the effect that environments do not have to be bracketed explicitly. The following paper introduces the programming language ŞäferTeX as a user interface to the TeX typesetting engine. It is shown how the development of a language with reduced redundancy increases the beauty of code appearance.