Re: patch for inserting raw latex command to gnumeric for exporting latex files

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 12:14:53PM +0800, Shixin Zeng wrote:
> Alan Horkan wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Shixin Zeng wrote:
> > > > Alan Horkan wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I had a very quick look at the patch and it mentions that the LaTeX is
> > > > included in the output with no escaping
> > > >
> > > > Could the whole block by escaped using the XML tag for proccessing
> > > > instructions <? like these ?> as these are processing instructions if
> > > > I'm not mistaken or am I missing something?
> > > Actually, I choose '\L{' and '}' as escaping string for no good reason,
> > > and I didn't investigate into gnumeirc deeply, so I don't know which
> > > tags should be more elegant for instructions processing for gnumeric.
> > > you pointed out that <? and ?> are processing instructions, but whose
> > > instructions? XML's or gnumeric? I don't know XML well either.
> >
> > <? and ?> are XML all the way and not specific to Gnumeric
> > they are intended for embedding information to be processed later by
> > another application.
> >
> > you might already have seen <?php  ?>
> >
> > I cannot say for sure if this is a good idea, I'm hoping Jody or someone
> > else will know better.
> It sounds a good idea, but I think I should wait for some time for 
> further discussion before changing it. If nobody else gives a better 
> solution, I'll take yours.

Using <? ?> is a nice thought, but doesn't seem useful in that
gnumeric would treat it as text, and escape it when exported to xml
as '&gt;?' which does not seem like an improvement.  In the short
term it seems best to use TeX-ish formulations.  Over time I'd like
to see gnumeric offer some sort of per cell/sheet/workbook/object
mechanism for user supplied data which might be useful here.
Howevr, that is a 2.x level feature.