Use of LaTeX for the specification

["Alex Bennée" <alex.bennee@linaro.org>]

Hi,

I recently updated my distro to Trixie and found that HTML generation is
broken. As far as I can tell this comes down to the use of \cline as
shown in this minimal example:

  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage{hhline}
  \begin{document}
  \begin{tabular}{ |l||l|l| }
  \hline
  Bits & Device Specific & Purpose \\
  \cline{1-2}
  Read / Write & Device Specific & \\
  \cline{1-2}
  Purpose & Device Specific & \\
  \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \end{document}

which results in TeX ending early:

  ! Undefined control sequence.
  \f:HBorder ...border-top:1px solid \#\hline:color 
                                                    ;"></td>
  l.8 R
       ead / Write & Device Specific & \\
  ? 
  ! Emergency stop.

I'm liaising with Debian and the TexLive authors to try and figure out
whats going on. However it does raise a bigger question for the
specification - why do we use LaTeX?

I don't doubt that is a powerful typesetting system but its arcane
syntax is a bit of a barrier to entry especially for casual
contributors. With the recent breakage I wonder if I'm the canary in the
coal mine and this will potentially be a problem for everyone else once
their TeX setups upgrade.

I'd like to augment the repo with some GitHub actions so we can keep an
upto date rendered draft available as well as some lint checks so we can
avoid introducing dodgy markup. But firstly I want to ask is LaTeX the
right source format for the spec going forward? Is this something
mandated by OASIS or just an accident of history?

Thanks,

-- 
Alex Bennée
Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro