Re: UMI Dissertation Abstracts

> Does anyone see the point of this?

My reaction is less dismayed than yours.

UMI may speak for its own policies.  Still, I can imagine elements of
its historical record which might make the article you cite a product
of reasoned decision.  There were many years when AAP, then ISO 12083,
math were the only SGML solutions available.  Given a perceived need
to move archived documents to SGML (including whatever math might be
involved) and a reluctance to change policy after embarking in a
certain direction, Markup Inertia could bring this old technology to
our wondering eyes today.

As to

  <math> <f> <g>4</g></f> </math> is a complex-valued function

perhaps the <g>4</g> is some character call -- a Delta?  I don't
recall AAP markup well enough to defend it.  (Nico?)  It may also be
evidence of a bug, as you suggest.

I'm only commenting that I think the markup may not seem so
off-the-wall if one actually gets to know the history a bit.  Then one
can further ask about what was in the TeX source, what the target
language is, and what resources were committed to the translation
program.  You may be correct in suggesting the effort was not what it
could have been (or what it should be now), but I know too little to
agree at this point.

-Ron

Received on Tuesday, 6 July 1999 10:09:48 UTC