Although Lamport's papers are I think important and will warrant further study, for my purposes right now I just want a 4th column in an eqnarry environment that has left justified text (that does not start out in math mode). I currently tutor math students and use TeXmacs for solving examples. I want to be able to include some justification for steps in that 4th column. 

Kark K suggested that I "...put a 'document' structure inside that last column...". I am not sure how to do that. The only way I know to reference the last column is with <cwith|1|-1|4|4|var|val> but var must be from the Table Layout list http://www.texmacs.org/tmdoc/devel/format/environment/env-table.en.html and I do not see a var there that would allow me to have a <document> tag auto inserted into each new 4th column. 

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Karl Hegbloom <address@hidden> wrote:

Leslie Lamport the author of LaTeX wrote an article about using a structured style to use for writing proofs. I can't remember the name of the article or how to find it off hand and I don't have time to look it up. What I remember though is that when I used it I found it really did help with readability of my mathematical proof. I've also used the similar modification to the equation array in TeXmacs. I knew even less about it than I do now and I still don't know how to solve the problem you're presenting. I did about the same thing you're doing there.

I can't do the experiment and figure it out for you because I'm too busy. I would start with trying to put a 'document' structure inside that last column then play with the table and cell settings in case it needs to wrap for long lines. Start with reading the source to included macros, perhaps the float environments like table and figure or example,  proof,  etc have it.

For writing proofs in the style that Leslie Lamport advocates in the article I mentioned I think we would need sort of a list style. Each proof step list item's number needs to be accessible via a label for referencing from inside the notes field. But the label is optional,  and must be filled in by the user because it's not needed for every step and to make it line number independent in case of insertions or rearrangement during editing.

I want outline editing functions and keybindings, to move nested enumerated lists around. For a proof writing list environment the same keys would occasionally be useful.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016, 19:51 Michael Shea <address@hidden> wrote:

I made the following modification to the eqnarray* environment to add a 4th column. The purpose to to add a justification or notes columns so as to provide a justification for steps in a solutions process. 

It works pretty good, but I would like to have the 4th column to default to text mode,  so I don't have to mouse to the "T" in the toolbar or do a '\text' command. Any ideas?