Lout (software)

Lout is a semantically defined but extensible layout language for computer-assisted creation of text documents. In way of the layout description and the expressiveness of the language Lout is similar to LaTeX and troff macros. The name of the language symbolizes the concept of document layout. The (single / reference) implementation Basser Lout is available as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL ) is available.

History

Lout is the result of a research project, which was started in the summer of 1984 at the School of Information Technologies at the University of Sydney. The goal was to develop a consistent language for text formatting that allows a user to exploit the capabilities of modern printing equipment, without being confronted with technical details of the implementation of high-quality printouts. The result of the project is the 1991 published in the first version formatter Basser Lout, which generated from a excellent with Lout text file to a PostScript file.

Properties

With Lout text documents can be described according to the text processing standards. Besides language elements for logical parts of the text, such as headings, paragraphs, quotations, footnotes, headers and footers for document types such as books or articles, and variable font design, there are description elements for setting mathematical formulas, tables, indexes, and bibliographies. Simple graphics and graphs can be described. While the expressive power of the language with LaTeX is comparable, the resource requirement of the Basser Lout interpreter - is considerably less. Due to the lower distribution exist for Lout but not nearly as many adaptations and extensions as for LaTeX. From troff to Lout differs primarily by its language consistency.

As a layout language that is fully implemented with the Basser Lout - interpreter, Lout can be used as a target language for the layouting of SGML or XML documents.

Example

@ SysInclude { doc } @ Doc @ Text @ Begin @ Display @ Heading { This caption will be centered and bold} This is a paragraph. @ PP This is a second paragraph. @ I { This sentence is in italics. } @ End @ Text Web Links