mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

> On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 02:24:41PM +0100, Marten Bauer wrote:
> > i just read the user manual again and try to translate it into german or 
> > write 
> > some further information into it in english. In my opinion some 
> > explanations 
> > are to short and important informations is missing. Are you (Joris) 
> > intrested 
> > in my User Manual workarounds? Where shall i send them to if you are 
> > intrested?

Thanks for your proposal. There is indeed a high need for people who are
willing to contribute to the user manual. We have now made it easy for
people to make small (or large) contributions by fragmenting
the documentation into small files on well specified topics.
David explained how to contribute via CVS (you can also directly
send me files or tarballs and I will put them on CVS):

> The canonical way to contribute to the documentation is to register[1]
> on Savannah, then ask Joris for a CVS access to the texmacs-doc[2]
> project. From this point you can use CVS to get the web-accessible[3]
> version of the documentation and check-in changes. You can find
> partial instructions[4] on how to use CVS on my website.
> 
>   [1] http://savannah.gnu.org/account/register.php
>   [2] http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/texmacs-doc/
>   [3] Menu Help->Online help->Browse web in TeXmacs
>   [4] http://ddaa10.free.fr/texmacs/doc/savannah-webcvs.html
> 
> Also note that discussion about improvements/fixes to the documentation
> should take place on the address@hidden[5] mailing list.
> 
>   [5] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev

The most urgent need is writing documentation. Several topics are
not well documented. Here are a few, but you might wish to add more:

  * Tables (all different whistles and bells + examples)
  * Images (how to resize, truncate, etc.)
  * Typesetting tricks (moving, resizing boxes, phantoms, etc.)
  * How to write style files, the standard style files & packages
  * Structured editing, visual aids, etc.
  * Undocumented TeXmacs primitives in src/Basic/Data/tree.hh

Maybe we should make a wish-list with the topics which most need
better documentation.

Of course, you may also improve the existing documentation,
by adding some more details or examples. It would also be nice
to collect some scattered documentation or information from
the Wiki and the mailing lists and transform it into
real documentation. In particular, the tutorial should be
converted into the new documentation format.

We are finally interested by translations into other languages,
German in your case. In that case, we suggest to start with
the welcome page for the online help and the user manual.

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR ALL USERS: it is in the scope of everyone to
write good documentation. Taking some time to translate the existing
documentation or investigate how particular undocumented features work
will make you discover lots of things. It is probably a very good way
to learn TeXmacs and enjoy the program more.