- From: Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden>
- To: address@hidden
- Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] TeXmacs name
- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:25:30 +0100
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There were lots of name suggestions in the following discussion, also
please bear in mind the concerns about availability of domain names.
http://etherpad.com/jtzJxcpeV4
Álvaro.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 09:13, Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden> wrote:
>
Dear Madhusudan,
>
>
I am afraid you're wrong.
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>
> I think that TeXmacs is almost the perfect name for the program.
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>
Yes if the target is to confuse everybody.
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>
It has TeX
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> support,
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>
Wrong. It exports (not 1:1) to LaTeX, runs BibTeX for the bibliography
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and can use TeX fonts. Employing TeX in the name triggers the wrong
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expectations - you seem yourself not to have understood what the
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program does alone from the name... Once more: TeXmacs has its own
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typesetter. It does not run TeX for positioning boxes.
>
>
> and is almost as versatile as Emacs.
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>
for many people (especially the target group of TeXmacs) the
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association upon hearing "Emacs" is to a horribly complicated program,
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that requires learning arcane keybindings even for the most basic
>
operations, that uses a weird terminology and that sports a cryptic
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and nonstandard interface.
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>
N.B. I am a happy user of Emacs myself, I am here just portraying a
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very common reaction independently of whether it does justice to
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Emacs.
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>
If you'd like to underline the programmable aspect of the editor, I
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don't think this is of interest to users that don't know yet the
>
program. A really important property of TeXmacs however is that it
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treats the document as an structured tree which can be modified live.
>
>
I would have perhaps preferred
>
> something like SciTeXWriter (or SciTeXmaster, given that it is more than
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> just a writer), but TeXmacs does nicely.
>
>
No mumble-jumble of amputated words can do justice to a reasonably
>
featureful piece of software. Following that rule one could call Paris
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SeinEiffCoeursées.
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>
> Your other proposed name is obscure sounding, and if anything,
>
>
_Your_ name sounds obscure to me. I hope you understand that this is a
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relative perception and that you cannot fully satisfy a global
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audience. You just need something unique enough and to dispense with
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the need for denotation (you can still use connotation). Quipu would
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become familiar as well as any other name; surely we will receive
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other good suggestions.
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>
does not
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> convey anything about the functionality of the program to the potential
>
> userbase.
>
>
The current one gets the wrong message across.
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>
> Name changes are usually fraught with confusion, and unless there
>
> is a really massive upside, best not done.
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>
The upcoming release of a QT-based version is exactly the opportunity.
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TeXmacs is massively undermarketed in regard to what is capable of
>
doing.
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>
Best regards,
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>
Álvaro.
>
>
> With regards.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Gubinelli Massimiliano
>
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>>
>
>> (almost crossposting from address@hidden)
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>> Dear all,
>
>> I would like to revive once more the debate on the name for the
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>> TeXmacs program. There are many reasons for believing that the current
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>> name does not serve very well the popularity of the program. I've just
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>> come across to another possibility (among many other already proposed
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>> and lost somewhere in the internet):
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>> * Quipu (or kipu, or khipu) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu).
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>> Apparently this is the ancient way Incas had to keep various kind
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>> of informations and seems to mean "knot" so there is some link with
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>> mathematics and with structured information. The images of Quipus make
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>> me think to trees (of TeXmacs tags).
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>>
>
>> Here en excerpt of the wikipedia page (nice and worth reading)
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>>
>
>> "
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>> Most of the information recorded on the quipus consists of numbers in
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>> a decimal system;[1] see The encoding system below.
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>> Some of the knots, as well as other features such as color, are
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>> thought to represent non-numeric information, which has not been
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>> deciphered. It is generally thought that the system did not include
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>> phonetic symbols analogous to letters of the alphabet. However Gary
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>> Urton has suggested that the quipus used a binary system which could
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>> record phonological or logographicdata.
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>> "
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>>
>
>> Another possible name :
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>> * Tiamat (Tiamat is another mathematical authoring tool)
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>> which has the benefit to allow to conserve the extension .tm
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>> Best,
>
>> Massimiliano
>
>> ps: thanks to Martin for correcting my previous post on texmacs-dev.
>
>
>
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