mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:

> Wayan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> The strongest argument is I think the typesetting quality. This is a
> >> good argument to the normal user and especially for the
> >> mathematicians.
> >
> > The type setting quality is similar, isn't it? Do you see different
> > quality between LyX/TeXmacs/LaTeX? I think this not strong argument.
> 
> No, there is no difference I could see. And you're right. This is not
> an argument for a LyX-User or a Emacs-Auctex-Latex-User to switch to
> TeXmacs. It's an argument for Word-User, for people who never wrote
> and will never write a line of markup. You can show them TeXmacs and
> they see: Oh, just like Word. Simple WYSIWYG-Programm. 

I completely disagree. I am a mathematician myself, I have used both
LaTeX and Emacs for a long time, but I never found this satisfactory.
In my opinion, good editors distract authors as little as possible
from what they are actually writing (the mathematics in my case).
The more aestetical confort and wysiwygness the editor provides,
the more this goal is being reached. I think that 95% of the human beings
agree with this principle. It turns out that a significant part of
the remaining 5% have been forced to use LaTeX/Emacs/etc.
for a long time, because there were no good alternatives.
This past has brainwashed their minds so that many of them will
deny evidence even when good alternatives do appear...

As to the difference in typesetting quality on the screen between
TeXmacs and LyX: if you did not notice any then please read
a book about the subject, maybe the TeX book ;^)

I am sorry if I sound a bit harsh. I can understand that people
don't bother about typesetting quality or that they want to remain
into a scheme which is familiar to them. If this is so,
then I accept that you think that the typesetting quality
is not a strong argument (or an argument at all).
But I do not agree if you simply deny that there is a difference,
because we have spent a lot of effort on this issue.

Further reading: http://www.texmacs.org/Example/gutenberg/gutenberg.tm


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Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>
http://www.texmacs.org: GNU TeXmacs scientific text editor
http://www.math.u-psud.fr/~vdhoeven: personal homepage
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