mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Jan Ulrich Hasecke <address@hidden>]

Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden> writes:

> I completely disagree. 

Pardon, do you disagree me or Wayan.

Maybe I was not clear enough. 

> 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...

ACK. It is awful to write math in LaTeX. So that's reason I wrote that
every mathematician will love TeXmacs, the first time they see it. If
they are not brainwashed Emacs-Users. ;-)

> 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 refered to the typesetting quality on paper. On screen TeXmacs is
miles ahead. No question!

> 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).

NACK. I think TeXmacs is not far away from a normal wordprocessor from
the users point of view. If you can use a wordprocessor, you can use
TeXmacs. Wordprocessors like Word, Kword, Abiword, OOo has a similar
GUIs like TeXmacs.

You cannot tell a Word-User to use Emacs/LaTeX. But you can tell him
to use TeXmacs, because TeXmacs has a real GUI and is WYSIWYG. But why
should he use any TeX-ish programm at all? Because of the better
typesetting quality on paper!

LyX has also a real GUI but you need a preview-programm to see what
you get. And this is something a Word-User does not know.

So typesetting-quality on paper and WYSIWYG _are_ arguments _not_ only
to mathematicians but to all users. To methematicians it is a very
strong argument. Writers can live with LyX. 

> 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.

I think that neither Wayan nor I said something like this. 

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

Wrong url http://www.texmacs.org/Examples/gutenberg/gutenberg.tm

Ciao!
juh

-- 
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