mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[michael graffam <address@hidden>]

--- Daniele Pighin <address@hidden> wrote:

> Speaking about usability, TeXmacs (absolutely?)
> needs:
> - popup windows for confirmations and so on
> - popup dialogs for configuring user options and
> preferences, page layout, and 
> so on
> - dialogs to do customization things, such as
> visually edit a style, header 
> and footer, choose what kind of numeration to use

Popups? Dialogs? My vote is 'nay'. I _LIKE_ the
TeXmacs interface -- I am old-time Emacs user -- and I
don't want dialogs and popups getting in my way!

That said, a guile/gtk interface could make this sort
of thing user selectable. 

> So I ask wether wouldn't it be possible to
> feature-freeze texmacs for a while 
> and concentrate on the port to another (modern,
> widely-used, easily-accessible) toolkit?

There was a message than came though here a few weeks
ago announcing that some group was doing a KDE/Qt
port.

It didn't get much response. 

A serious effort at a gtk-guile based GUI would get my
attention, and I'd be inclined to help. I've heard
Joris mention this too, and I agree with him 100%. 

> Moreover, there are tools such as glade (gtk) or
> qt-designer (Qt) that would 
> let you and any other programmer tweak the interface
> quite easily.

Glade wouldn't be worth much to us, as far as I can
see. The preferred way to implement the TeXmacs GUI is
with Scheme. 'nuf said. 

I personally don't see the point in rushing it. It
will happen in time.

I certainly don't support a feature freeze. As a
TeXmacs user the toolkit is quite unimportant to me.

What _IS_ important to me is TeXmacs' ever-widening
assortment of gadgets that give me freedom and control
over my documents. 

Your basic argument is that there is a learning curve
with TeXmacs -- its strange to people, and they don't
bother to learn it. So is Linux! So is Emacs! So is
TeX! So is just about EVERY piece of software worth
knowing!

Yet more and more people are learning them. 



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