[zzless]

The way I see it, this only proves my point. As you write: '...None of them have become the standard...' and this is at the center of the argument. TeX may not be ideal but it strikes the correct balance to become and stay standard for so many years. One can do pretty much anything in bare Postscript (and I am ashamed to admit, I have) or even 'handmade' PDF but it does not make it a good alternative to TeX. I have experimented with alternative syntaxes (apologies it this is not the correct plural of 'syntax') but had to give all of them up due to a number of flaws. These experiments gave me a new appreciation for Knuth's choices.

[ogogmad]

I disagree. I think Latex will soon become legacy like Cobol.

HTML and CSS basically do a lot more than Latex does - except for maths things - and are far more widely known, and far more forgiving. Also importantly, they support hyperlinks, animations, and inline interactive scripts. It seems that HTML and CSS with the appropriate CSS styles and shorthands (like Markdown) could eat up everything that Latex does and much more. I don't know if Latex can survive the onslaught.

[zzless]

I have heard HTML/CSS mentioned as an alternative and I pray every day this time will never come. Even taking all the complaints leveled at LaTeX at face value, using HTML/CSS looks like pure hell to me. Allow me to elaborate.

1. You mentioned forgiving. One may not like the style of TeX error messages but its tracing facilities are extensive and given enough time and perseverance one can track nearly any layout issue down an correct it. Compare this to CSS silently ignoring incorrect syntax, having different syntax across browsers, etc. I would take strict syntax checking over this mess any day.

2. Many complained that LaTeX has more than one way of achieving the same result. True but how many ways are there of centering a div on a page? I can list six off the top of my head and there are probably more.

3. You casually mentioned '...except for maths things...' but this is far from minor. I cringe when I read engineering papers not written in TeX: the formulas are so ugly that they border on unreadable.

4. CSS may be wider known but unlike TeX CSS is a moving target. Being designed by a committee it carries all the flaws, like kludgy design in the name of 'compatibility', poor choices of syntax to make it appeal to a wider audience, etc. The designers of CSS are so enamored with the 'cascade' but in practice it is rarely used as intended. The 'important!' kludge as a perfect testament to this.

5. LaTeX syntax may be unappealing to some but HTML takes it to a whole other level: whitespace that affects the layout yet no easy way of getting rid of it (HTML style comments are a torture device); too verbose... one may not like the backslash but what about <...> </...> ? Five extra symbols!

6. LaTeX engines produce full featured PDF so hyperlinks are not a problem (most LaTeX documents have them). Yes, CSS has so called 3D graphics but it is anything but programmer friendly. What good are 3D transforms if one cannot even use simple lighting effects programmatically; c'mon, at least give me Lambert reflection! Incidentally, inline JavaScript can be included in pdf documents produced by LateX as well (although ... why?)

[catiopatio]

> I think Latex will soon become legacy like Cobol.

LaTeX’s usage has only increased with the creation and growth of the web. What makes you think it’s going anywhere?

[ogogmad]

Academia has got inertia. How long has it taken it to adopt Open Access? There's far more investment into web tech than into Latex. Browsers can do more than PDF readers.

[zodiac]

The “except for math” part is doing a lot I think. There’s a huge amount of work needed to get rendered math to look as good as latex’s and I’m not sure CSS (as an example) is expressive enough to get this done

[benibela]

Or HTML syntax will become legacy

People are write something like Kotlin html dsl