mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

> I write just to introduce myself. I hope I will be able to help with 
> something, but I'll try to get to know texmacs better before raising my 
> hand.
> 
> My name is Álvaro Tejero Cantero. I am currently studying physics (roughly 
> maîtrise level) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). I have 
> studied for one year in Paris (Paris VI -- Jussieu). 

Thank you for your detailed message, which helps us to better understand
the profiles of the users of TeXmacs as well as your expectations.

> I am very interested in the broadcasting of free (in the sense we all 
> already 
> know) scientific content. At the end of my stay in Paris I conceived a 
> project which I have been running now for two years with some help from 
> friends at faculty. It consists in taking notes with a laptop in the 
> classroom and afterwards processing, enhancing, completing them to be 
> published. I am currently doing this with LyX.

I think that TeXmacs should fit well for this type of application,
due to its ergonomy and the efficiency of its keyboard shortcuts.

> The documents (a list of the currently nearly-finished ones goes at the 
> end) 
> contain figures, references, etc. I am now involved in getting more people 
> to 
> do this, and simultaneously in setting up a web presence for all this (we 
> used to distribute the documents through a fairly simple page but got tired 
> of the uploading burden and are now preparing a database powered website. I 
> expect this to take off mid march).
> 
> I am now using LyX but are absolutely amazed by TeXmacs. As a community 
> member I deeply, very deeply, thank you your effort. I am astonished by the 
> capabilities and ambitions of TeXmacs. And I am here because I believe in 
> some of the design choices behind it (I have read a paper by Joris 
> explaining 
> the wysiwig-point-of-view, I don't know if it is recent).

It is not really recent (I have this point of view for about ten years),
but it takes a lot of time to develop software which demonstrates it and
to write articles which explain it.

> I trust TeXmacs. What I can provide right know is some efficiency 
> considerations based on my day-to-day experience taking notes of fairly 
> technical character in real time. I think I can also make some corrections 
> to 
> the spanish translation. I know C++ but certainly not at the required level 
> for making contributions. I also know python. 

We are interested by all help: translations, suggestions, programming,
style files, interfaces with other systems, and whatever you invent.

If there are people who want to write a Python interface,
that would also be nice. My point of view is that, ideally speaking,
all extension languages should be equivalent, so one should be
able to use Python instead of Scheme. However, this point of view
presupposes that one fully understands how to write and maintain
the "glue" between different extension languages. A similar problem
will arise at the moment when our interfaces to computer algebra systems
will become more powerful and allow the different systems to directly
talk to each other via TeXmacs.

> I hope also to make publicity to the good ideas behind LyX. And one day, 
> perhaps I will be able to start writing these long and complicated 
> documents 
> in TeXmacs.

I do not see why you have to wait for one day: in its present state,
99% of the features which are used most frequently in TeX/LaTeX have
been implemented in TeXmacs; that is the purpose of version 1.0.
If there are missing features, please let us know, so that we can put
them on the wish list.

Also, I think that TeXmacs more needs publicity than LyX. For instance,
contrary to LyX, TeXmacs is not yet shipped with any major GNU/Linux
distribution (except for Debian, soon). I do not understand at all the
policy of the big commercial distributions like Redhat, Mandrake, Suse, etc.
I wrote to all of them, proposed them to support the software for them and
made them aware of the popularity of TeXmacs (for instance, you may take a
look on freshmeat: TeXmacs is before LyX. Understand me well: I do not want
to say anything bad about Lyx, which is a very nice program, but I think
that our ambitions go beyond theirs). In general, they do not even reply
to email messages! I think that this is crazy: a very busy person like RMS
(Richard Stallman) replies *immediately*. The big distributions could pay
people to reply, but they seem not to care at all.

So what can users do? If you bought a CD with one of the major
distributions, then you should have support for a few months.
*Please* write them and tell them that you thought that a program like
GNU TeXmacs would automatically come with their distribution (or that you
actually bought the CD for this purpose and that you would like to be
reimbursed if possible...). *Please* ask them how to install TeXmacs;
you might pretend to be a complete newbee, and let them do all the work.
Hopefully, if sufficiently many people bother them in this way,
then they will decide to include TeXmacs...
Also, if you happen to know someone who decides about which programs
to include in a given distribution, *please* try to convince that person.

So, in order to resume, I really do not understand how to efficiently
make publicity; that is a point where users may provide a lot of help ...
with little effort.

> Meanwhile, I can test TeXmacs with my mother's documents (around 
> four books on geography or history with very few fancy elements. Long, but 
> simple), lab reports and such.

Yes please, but once again, TeXmacs should support even the more
fancy elements now (some exceptions: landscape tables and
pictures embedded in the text *and* thereby altering its width).
Unfortunately, we provide very little documentation at the moment,
but that should not mislead you: most features of TeX/LaTeX are there.

I also notice that, in average, TeXmacs now has a *better* typesetting
quality than TeX (global page breaking, better vertical spacing,
more subtle placement of scripts and big delimitors, etc.).
Moreover, the wysiwyg-ness of TeXmacs helps you to provide
a camera-ready document in an efficient and user friendly way.

In my opinion, the main missing feature of TeXmacs is
high quality conversion algorithms from/to other data formats
(like TeX/LaTeX/Html/Xml/Rtf/etc.). This will be our main priority
between the versions 1.0 and 1.1. Other main features that we plan
to add are a technical drawing editor and spreadsheet capacities
based on the interfaces with extern systems. That will be before
version 2.0.

> List of documents (the titles have been translated from spanish).
> The corresponding subjects span 60 or 45h.
> ...

Please consider writing large and complex documents using TeXmacs.
We might put pieces of such documents on the Web (if permitted) and
thereby provide interesting examples for other users (I actually plan
to convert all my own work to TeXmacs when the converters will be better
and put everything on the web). This would also be a good large scale test
for TeXmacs and we might ensure the necessary support in the case that
you have some questions or that some features are missing.

I also notice that my mother (who is a novelist) already wrote
a complete book with TeXmacs one year ago, and that I am writing all
my own mathematical and other work (including a book) with it myself.

Best regards,

Joris