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Re: [TeXmacs] Two problems of TeXmacs (IMHO)


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden>
  • To: Javier Arántegui Jiménez <address@hidden>
  • Cc: TeXmacs users <address@hidden>
  • Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] Two problems of TeXmacs (IMHO)
  • Date: 17 Dec 2003 13:57:17 -0500
  • Organization: Proyecto Alqua -- alqua.com
Hello,

My opinions on this are:

-- LaTeX is legacy. The only upside about LaTeX is that it just works
because there are zillions of small pieces that get along when planets
align to get some job done. But it's been 20 years around and the time
has come to innovate. And the new tools must be explainable by
themselves. So if this is not the case, we're missing "TeXmacs in 20
minutes" and "The TeXmacs book".

Yesterday I had the religious experience of using TeXmacs in a
PIV-2.66GhZ. Were my computer that powerful, I would use TeXmacs for
everything. So the right path, in my opinion, is to make TeXmacs rock
even more, not to depend on LaTeX -- even for explanation.

-- Which drives us to the name. I don't remember if I actually sent an
email narrating "A first user experience". It took me 20 minutes and
overcoming some misunderstandings to convey that TeXmacs should be
thought of as self-standing and independent of TeX and Emacs.
Also it's been argued thousands of times that linking one of the best
first-user experiences (which TeXmacs is or will be in short order) to
two of the worst is bad marketing strategy.

So instead of endless arguments, Joris, please, is there any possible
chance of changing TeXmacs' name??. I always think of the name change
happening along with a major release, so that it may get lots of user
attention. I don't think I'm wrong if I say that the user community here
would take care of all the administrative hassle for you: domain name,
account names, etc.

The loss of the present popularity isn't a big deal, IMHO: you can
always redirect from texmacs.org and, TeXmacs hasn't still exploded.

Joris: would it be a requisite for the name change to bear "TM" in it so
that the file extension and other identifiers can be kept?

If you agreed, I'm sure we could come up with something better. An
abstract name is better for a start, since it's better not to say
something than to create misleading expectations with a wrong name.


Please Joris, agree at least to review the names that people may
propose, and tell the requisites you think the new name should have...

A lot of us have had real problems to explain TeXmacs to other people.
Think of what happens when there's nobody with the user knowing what the
pitfalls in the name are.

A well managed change can bring lots on attention over TeXmacs.

Thanks for considering it, álvaro.

--
Álvaro Tejero Cantero

http://alqua.com -- documentos libres
free documents


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