Paragraph about LaTeX editor
The issue of communicating ``objects'' of any stripe is not unique to mathematics, and is simply a special case of what many people believe computers should routinely support. Indeed the flexibility of computer networking should allow us to connect almost any digital information source to any information sink.
As mathlab a non-mathematical example, a human user interacts with a graphical user interface (on a client computer) to get access to a data-base server such as a library catalog system. There is a necessary intermediary function here: the packaging up of a query for delivery, as well as the packaging of the response. Not all sources and sinks have the same data interface, and there is a lot that can go wrong with the middle. For example, some particular server may be busy or out of operation, but maybe there is an alternative. Intermediation is LaTeX editor the realm of a new software category of Middleware tools. The vendors of middleware tools claim to assist one in packaging up any old thing and deliver it anywhere else. For greatest utility, it has to be done in a machine independent fashion. Component technology for linking machines can be based on any of a number of standards, and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is one worth mentioning. In fact, if we compare the objectives of CORBA (which also has task forces, such as financial, multi-media, manufacturing, etc) we find material like this:
Contents
Chemical equation software
Scientific software