mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

["Andrey G. Grozin" <address@hidden>]

Hello *,

On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, David Allouche wrote:
> Please, can you explain what you mean by "the working directory"? Not "the 
> value returned by the getcwd() POSIX call", but in which ways it affects 
> TeXmacs' behavior, and, indirectly, you as a user. I'm not purposefully 
> stupid, I want to know what the working directory means to you as a user 
> interface feature.
OK, I'll explain my working habits a little. I create a new directory in
my $HOME for each *project* I work on. I am research physicist, so,
project means, in most cases, some activity which will result in a
publication of a paper in a scientific journal. But project can also mean
preparing a talk for a conference, a university course I teach, etc. etc.
In this directory, all files related to this project are hold: programs
(in computer algebra systems or other languages), drafts of the paper,
PostScript figures, emails from me to my collaborators and from my
collaborators to me, and so on. If there is too much stuff, I introduce
some more structure, and organize a directory tree.

I'm afraid, I never start programs by clicking on something (except games,
when I really don't care about the working directory). I just type their
names in xterm (nowadays, it is konsole, but this does not matter). So,
for me, the working directory is the most fundamental concept. When I am
in $HOME/hqet3, this means that I am now working on the paper about 3-loop
corrections in HQET. When I start emacs in this directory, I expect that
it will be most easy to access files related to the current project. The
same about texmacs and all other tools. If I change the working directory,
i.e. switch to another project, I would be extremely annoyed if the
default directory in the File->Open dialog would be the last directory
used in this application, i.e., the project I am *not* working on now.

Sorry for the long explanation of my personal habits. You now see that,
when I see Windows, I always ask: what is my working directory now, and
receive no answer.

Best wishes,
Andrey
P.S. I completely agree with you that the scrolling behaviour of TeXmacs
when its window is defocused is very annoying. If you can fix *this*
problem, I'd be very grateful to you.