- From: Pablo Angulo <address@hidden>
- To: address@hidden
- Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] I like write a Tesis
- Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:19:40 +0200
Hola!
Te copio-y-pego un email que llegó a la lista hace unos meses, de un
tipo que acababa de escribir su tesis con texmacs. Yo estoy en la misma
tesitura y casi que me inclino por escribir los capítulos por separado y
pasarlo a latex cuando termine:
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I just finished a major project (thesis) using TeXmacs, and I wanted
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to share some experiences. The project has about 200 pages and 40
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floats. I have been using TeXmacs for several years now, and until now
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regularly used TeXmacs for the "draft" phase of various documents (for
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which it really shines), and used LaTeX for the final typesetting.
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However, this time I chose to use TeXmacs from the beginning to the
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end. I found myself developing so many workaround that I thought I'd
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share them, in case anyone wants to take a similar path, and so that
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maybe Joris (or someone else who knows the sources) can fix some of
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the bugs.
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Don't get me wrong, I like TeXmacs, and it works very well for small
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documents. However, I think TeXmacs can only compete with LaTeX if it
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provides a solid stable foundation that users and publishers can
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depend on. While LaTeX needs a huge amount of work in order to get an
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acceptable workflow, when correctly set up it is rock solid. TeXmacs
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is easy to get used to, but extremely crashy when trying to do
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non-basic operations. With hindsight, I have to say that had I known
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all the problems I have encountered, I had probably chosen LaTeX, from
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which I know that it is hard to get used to, but it is stable. It is
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very frustrating having to deal with mysterious crashes and figuring
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out workarounds close to the deadline.
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Currently it seems that new features are added all the time, such as
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the vector graphics editor. In my opinion TeXmacs has more than enough
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innovative features and flexibility by now to beat any other
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scientific editor, but long-term usability is just bad. With respect
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to the list below, I think that the upmost priority should be to get
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the existing code as stable and fast as possible (in particular for
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large documents), and to get the stylesheet language as solid and as
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well-documented as possible. Otherwise TeXmacs will never get a
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substantial user base.
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That said, this is the list. It is organized in three parts: dangerous
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things than can ruin the output by silently introducing errors,
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annoying things that are just counter-intuitive or take a lot of time
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getting used to, and performance issues that are relevant when editing
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large documents. I loosely ordered the items in order of descending
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importance.
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1) Dangerous things
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-------------------
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1a) Deleted references: TeXmacs indefinitely remembers references it
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has once seen. If I create a <label>, reference it using <reference>
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and then delete the <label>, the reference is unchanged (even after
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Document > Update > All, multiple times), while it should display "?"
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instead. This can create very hard-to-spot errors in your document. As
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a workaround, I manually opened the .tm file and deleted everything in
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the <\references> and <\auxiliary> sections, which forces TeXmacs to
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regenerate everything, and searched for "?" in the PDF to check if
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there are any undefined reference. However, this should never happen
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in the first place. Moreover, there should be an indicator/warning if
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there are any undefined references or "cite"s in the document.
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1b) .tm~ Files: By default, the "File > Load" (BTW, why not "Open"?)
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dialog shows all file types (in fact there is no option to restrict it
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to TeXmacs files, e.g. .tm + .ts). In particular, it shows the .tm
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files side by side with their .tm~ files. It is very easy to mis-click
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the .tm~ file, which in an unfortunate setting may mean that you lose
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all of your work. TeXmacs should either not allow to open .tm~ files
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at all, hide them by default, or at least issue a warning when the
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user tries to open one.
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1c) Page Setup: There are two places where the page size can be set:
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Under File > Page Setup and under Document > Page > Size. At the
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least, the menu should be called "Print setup". Such things sound like
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minor issues, but anyone will FIRST find the prominent "Page setup"
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menu, change the size there, and assume that it did the trick, when
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all that is changed is the print setup. This issue alone cost me 15
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hours of re-breaking the whole document close to the deadline.
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1d) Document > Magnification: This is a similarly dangerous item,
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which should at least issue a warning that it changes the FONT SIZE,
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i.e. the amount of text that fits on a page. This is very easy to
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confuse with View > Shrinking factor. If you are required to submit an
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11pt document and accidentally mess with the "Magnification" you are
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in trouble, since TeXmacs will display 11pt font size, but it won't be
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11pt in print.
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1e) Consistency: I do not know how exactly, but I managed to get two
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installations of TeXmacs 1.0.7.10 that work exactly the same, except
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that in one copy the *bold* fonts (and only those) are a tiny bit
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wider. Therefore headings (and figures for captions) wrap differently.
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I have no idea if the font was changed recently or if the issue is
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caused by the setup, but in order to be exchangeable TeXmacs should
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make absolutely sure that documents look 100% the same when compiled
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on different systems (maybe use a checksum on the font files?). This
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one took me one day to figure out.
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1f) Sums & Integrals: There seems to have been a semantic change with
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respect to sums and integrals, which are now considered as "functions"
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(i.e. they have an argument), rather than just a symbol. This
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introduced a nasty behavior: If one creates an integral (say
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<big-around|<int>|<rsub|0><rsub|1>xyz>), puts the cursor at the end
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and presses "backspace" in order to delete the x, the <int> sign at
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the front is deleted instead! This is actually very easy to miss if
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you press "backspace" multiple times, e.g. in order to delete multiple
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characters, and corrupts the formulas. Instead, the last character
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should be deleted.
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1g) PDF Export: Embedded raster images (especially black & white) look
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ugly in the exported PDF. They seem to be compressed as very
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low-quality JPG, with clearly visible JPEG artifacts especially in
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purely black/purely white regions. The only workaround is to export as
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PS and convert to PDF manually using Ghostscript:
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gswin32c -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER
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-dPDFX -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dAutoFilterColorImages=false
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-dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false
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-dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode -sOutputFile=thesis.pdf -c save pop -f
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thesis.ps
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There should be a menu item to change the "PS to PDF" command, and a
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better preset.
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1h) Document > Update: One of the things that annoy me most when using
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LaTeX is that it doesn't automatically
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perform another run if it is required in order to get all the
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references right. However, LaTeX at least issues a warning. Using
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TeXmacs there is no warning, but the same annoying process of Document
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* click * Update * click * all * wait * Document * click * Update *
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click * etc. about 5 times in a row to be sure that all references are
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up-to-date. In my opinion, TeXmacs should automatically perform as
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many runs as required so that the labels do not change anymore.
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1i) Breaking of inline math: Inline formulas that are wrapped around a
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line ending are just plain ugly. For this reason LaTeX does not wrap
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them by default, and issues an "overfull hbox" warning instead.
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TeXmacs wraps them quietly, which requires to manually check every
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single line if it contains a silently wrapped inline formula.
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1k) Style files: I use a custom macro package for shortcuts, pretty
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formatting of algorithms, etc. All documents are in a Subversion
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repository, so it regularly happens (by an "svn update") that a style
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file changes without TeXmacs noticing (TeXmacs is not running during
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the "svn update"). I regularly found TeXmacs marking "undefined
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macros" in the main document, when they were cleary defined in the
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package file. It took me about 2 months to figure out that the styles
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need to be refreshed using "Tools > Update > Styles", and that
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restarting TeXmacs does NOT help. Why this doesn't happen
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automatically when TeXmacs is restarted is completely
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counter-intuitive. However, it may mess up your whole document, or
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make it use old macros, which both is very dangerous.
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2) Annoying things
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------------------
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2a) Stylesheet Language: I had to implement some extensions using the
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stylesheet language. If one goes one step beyond the standard
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functionality, TeXmacs crashes at the blink of an eye. I found myself
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spending about 20% of the time figuring out a solution for a problem,
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and then spending 80% of the time trying 4 other solutions until I
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find one that doesn't crash TeXmacs. While LaTeX can also be
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incredibly tiresome to work with, it is solid as a rock. I think if
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TeXmacs aims at production quality and use in professional
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environment, these issues -- which mostly concern power-users --
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desperately need to get fixed. Also, there needs to be a clear
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documentation of the evaluation order of the document tree. I spent
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several hours trying to figure out the exact semantics of the various
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"quote" tags, and eventually gave up.
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2b) Images: I found that the only image type that can be reliably used
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in Texmcas is EPS written by Ghostscript. PNG tends to crash TeXmacs
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with a memory overflow when exporting to PS, I found myself finally
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converting all raster images to EPS in order to get it to work. EPS
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files written by other applications (e.g. Illustrator) often result in
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zero-byte .PS files, or .PS files that are truncated at the page that
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contains the EPS. The workaround is to run Ghostscript's "eps2eps" on
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all .EPS files, which creates .EPS files that TeXmacs doesn't crash on.
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2c) Menu Layout: Generally, I found that TeXmacs menus are laid out in
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the way TeXmacs thinks about the document, not in the way that is most
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intuitive for the user. For example, inserting a float is done via
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"Format > Page > Insertion > Floating Object". I think the "Format"
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menu is the last place that anyone would look, in particular when
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there is a top-level "Insert" menu. Other examples: Tools > Update
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menu and Document > Update menu with similar functions but at
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different places, the same holds for Edit > Preferences > Keyboard and
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Edit > Preferences > Mathematics > Keyboard.
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2d) Bugs when using parts: There is an ugly bug when working with
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parts that causes TeXmacs to reproducibly crash at harmless actions
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such as selecting text across a chapter boundary (see my previous
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posts on this list).
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2e) Yes/No Dialog: Is there any reason for the cumbersome "yes/no"
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prompt? Having to backspace away the "no" and type "yes" is very VERY
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annoying. Even a simple "y"/"n" choice with one keypress would have
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been more usable. Similarly for the strange Qt "yes/no" dialog with
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the combobox. This should just use the default yes/no dialog that is
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provided by all OS and by Qt.
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2f) Extensible brackets: With the automatic extensible brackets there
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was apparantly introduced a bug: When extensible brackets are turned
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off (Edit > Preferences > Keyboard > Mathematics > Use extensible
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brackets), I am unable to insert extensible brackets anymore, even
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using the toolbox icon ("Insert large delimiter"). On the other hand,
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if I turn extensible brackets on, I cannot type left angles anymore
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("<" + 5x TAB), it just displays as "<left-<langle>-0>". I ended up
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copy & pasting either the large brackets or the angles each time I
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needed them.
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2g) Editing large documents: TeXmacs should be able to view separate
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parts of a document in different windows. Currently this is not
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possible, which makes creating references in large documents very
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slow: Switch to other part * wait * look up label * Switch back to
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current part * wait * insert label. The same holds for copy & pasting.
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Editing the whole document in one window is too slow.
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2h) Search: The search function needs a window, which should be
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non-modal. A very common task is to search for all occurrences of a
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text and change something close to that text which cannot be automated
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(for example search for all "TODO" and remove them, fix them, or
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ignore them). The problem is that after typing something, the
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(apparently undocumented) "Search next" shortcut (F3) does not work
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anymore, and one has to type Ctrl+F + the whole search phrase again,
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every single time. The layout for the "Search" dialog box is be quite
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standard by now (at least on Windows systems): "Match Case",
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"Up/Down", "Find Next", "Cancel". The same holds for the "Search &
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Replace" function.
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2i) Windows Version: I couldn't get the Windows version to compile, I
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ended up installing TeXmacs under Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM, and using
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a shared folder to access the .tm files on the Windows drive.
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2k) Redraw errors: When I show the whole document (Part > Show all
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parts), I frequently get redraw errors, where text from the current
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page and text from a completely different section at the end of the
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document are draw on top of each other, resulting in garbage text. The
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workaround is to force a redraw e.g. using "page down" + "page up".
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2l) Zooming: Zooming in and out should be seamless e.g. using
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Ctrl+scroll wheel, as is standard in most applications, instead of the
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"View > Shrinking factor" workaround.
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2m) TeXmacs frequently loses its configuration and displays the
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"Welcome to your new TeXmacs system" screen.
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3) Performance
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--------------
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3a) Editing anything above about 15 pages in "Paper" mode is just too
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slow to be usable. A part of the problem is that TeXmacs updates the
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whole document at every keypress. Since this cannot always be avoided,
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e.g. when re-wording some sentences in order to get a prettier line
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wrap, I ended up typing text fragments in an external editor, and copy
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& pasting them into TeXmacs as a block in order to avoid the update at
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every keypress. If views the whole document ("Parts > All") and
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accidentally types a complete word (with, say 10 characters), it is
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faster to kill TeXmacs, restart it and reload the document than having
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to wait for the updates.
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3b) Editing paragraphs that contain floats or captions of figures that
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contain images is incredibly slow, even in very small documents.
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3c) The same holds for the "Papyrus" mode when some floats are
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present. The unsatisfying workaround is to insert only figures while
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working with the text, and converting them to floats just before
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creating the final PDF.
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