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Re: My experience with TeXmacs and a question about the Jolly Writer


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  • From: Frank <address@hidden>
  • To: address@hidden
  • Subject: Re: My experience with TeXmacs and a question about the Jolly Writer
  • Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2020 16:45:46 +0100
Hi all,

Maybe have a PDF is reasonable, but I'm not sure people would like to spend
20 euros on a file and not 50 of a high quality (and heavy :)) book.

I would like to second that an electronic version is important (I have bought
both an electronic copy and a physical copy of some book). The disadvantage
of physical copies is that one cannot carry them everywhere, especially if
moving a country to another every 1-2 years (doing postdocs, for example).

I doubt a PDF can be protected against copy. (go to libgen and see for
yourself :))

But neither could physical copy prevent from scanning. At least up until now,
there is no technique to prevent absolutely the pirates: we can only fight
against them by ethics and laws.

Best wishes,
Frank

On 11/19/20, Massimiliano Gubinelli wrote:
Cher Pierre-Henri, deal all,

On 19. Nov 2020, at 14:11, Pierre-Henri Jondot <address@hidden
<mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:

Hi,

I rediscovered TeXmacs last april, after a very long hiatus. Indeed I tried
it in the 2000’s and, while I was really impressed by the features, I really
got frustrated and soon got back to edit all my texts with LaTeX.

I gave it another try this year when I tackled some presentations that I
intended to point my soon-to-be students to, for them to have a look during
the summer and prepare for the new academic year… Nothing fancy, mostly
complex numbers and some calculus. The integration of a simple drawing module
and not having to look for the most appropriate drawing application to
interface with Latex/beamer (and learn to use it) convinced me to choose
TeXmacs.

The result are those youtube videos (in French) :
https://youtu.be/2LnxJdJb7U4 <https://youtu.be/2LnxJdJb7U4>
https://youtu.be/5Fcl56--VJ4 <https://youtu.be/5Fcl56--VJ4>
https://youtu.be/TNwodosMR44 <https://youtu.be/TNwodosMR44>
https://youtu.be/rU94hEGOJxM <https://youtu.be/rU94hEGOJxM>
https://youtu.be/-_dunq3BAbM <https://youtu.be/-_dunq3BAbM>
https://youtu.be/qdlPcF-z1ug <https://youtu.be/qdlPcF-z1ug>

and the TeXmacs source files are there :
https://cahier-de-prepa.fr/mpsi-kju/docs?rep=176
<https://cahier-de-prepa.fr/mpsi-kju/docs?rep=176>



 very nice videos! can we add them to the list of TeXmacs videos we maintain
on youtube?


Now, what I’d like to say is that there is a steep learning curve with
TeXmacs, even if you’re not computer illiterate.

It would make sense to make TeXmacs my first choice when editing scientific
documents, but I am still facing many walls.


It would be very useful to have an idea of the difficulties and the concepual
wall that a beginner user faces, this would allow us to write better
tutorials. Can you explain the stumbling blocks you faced?


An example of difficulty I just encountered and for which I was about to ask
for help here : starting from a blank document and inserting a session, be it
python or scheme, I wondered how to terminate the session to go back to
normal editing, then why not a bit later in the document entering a new
session but… close session just terminated the process and I still had a
python or a scheme prompt, and typing anything just restarted the process…
(according to the documentation, this is not a bug, but a feature, and I
understand why it makes sense)


I'm not sure what you mean: kill the process or just go on with the text? In
the second case I just position the cursor with the mouse after the session
and continue writing. I'm sure there is an appropriate command, but it works
for me just as well..


Being with a mac keyboard it took me a very long time to find out that I had
to page-down (which doesn’t exist per se on a mac keyboard) to allow to the
cursor to go outside the session… Try it with a mouse and not using page-down
and you’ll understand I guess my frustration...


No it is easy: just click on the right margin, out of the session, the cursor
will position just after the session, then you can press enter and continue
writing norma text. Did I understood your difficulty correclty?


So there comes my question : Joris often redirects users to the Jolly Writer
for further reference, and I guess it might be a good read for me, as well as
for my students (it could be a good alternative to beamer for their
presentations) so I suggested our librarian to order one. I might want to
have one except it is expensive and this is the kind of document I would much
rather read on my iPad or the screen of my computer than on paper.

For a pdf, maybe watermark protected, I would be willing to pay a good 20
euros… (but maybe not 49…)


My opinion on this matter is the following:

1) Bundled with TeXmacs there is a substantial user manual (280 pages) which
contains all the basic features, there are some tutorial on the web page too,
and a lot of videos on youtube. In my experience people do not take time to
even look at the user guide before giving a try. The problem is that TeXmacs
is designed very differently wrt. a usual text editor so the user is confused
by his\her expectations.

2) The book Joris wrote (TJW) is very well written and of quality. I've just checked on amazon
and books on LaTeX (e.g. Lamports') sell in "Broché" form at 49 euros, and other books
are at 30 always in "Broché". So I feel the price for TJW is more than fair in my
opinion. It is not the only source for information and to me should be considered as a reasonable
way to show support for the project. Essentially there is several people which spend time on this
and Joris is the one which spend (by far) the larger amount of time on developing and making
TeXmacs better (and removing the bugs I put in...). You can check on savannah the commit log to
get an idea of the amount of programming time TeXmacs requires.

Maybe have a PDF is reasonable, but I'm not sure people would like to spend
20 euros on a file and not 50 of a high quality (and heavy :)) book.

3) I should say, I'm reading TJW since few months and I find really pleasant,
it is way more than a manual, and discuss general problem of creating
beautiful technical documentations in many aspects.


Would Joris consider letting us buy a pdf instead ?


Maybe he should consider to distribute it via the Apple Store Books or on the
Kindle. I doubt a PDF can be protected against copy. (go to libgen and see
for yourself :))


4) I would suggest to Joris to create maybe an account on services like
"Patreon" or the like, people which supports him would have priviledged
access to bug fixes. :)

Regards,


Best,
Max

Pierre-Henri

P.S. : I just received my M1 apple macbook air, and the intel built 1.99.15
version of TeXmacs works just fine and doesn’t feel any slower than with my
quadcore-i7 macbook from 2012...

We will have soon to ship Universal2 apps....


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