mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden>]

Hello everybody,

It is painful for me to see that TeXmacs gets much less attention from
the community than deserved. 

I am sure that part of the problem lies in the TeXmacs webpages. It's
not the particular arrangement of the pages, or rather it isn't only
that (it is true that there are too many links, and some don't follow
the "interface" you expect for a free software project webpage).

It's about the frames, that old plague of webpages. Frames were a great
idea with a bad implementation. Now they are being deprecated almost
everywhere. There is a lot written about why they are bad, but I'm
pretty sure their worst effect is in deep linking.

The TeXmacs webpage cannot be properly indexed by web crawlers, thus
losing visibility. Likewise, anybody who wants to link to TeXmacs finds
that either she loses the menus (by linking to the body of the page,
after looking for its name in the source) or she links to the entry
page, which is a pity for example for CAS authors who want to show an
example session with TeXmacs.

I am convinced that the webpage could use a complete redesign, but as me
and others don't seem to have the time, I propose just to make a small
script to dynamically assemble the menus and bodies of the pages in a
single file and thus get rid of frames.

Now, as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), the server where
TeXmacs is located (cri74.org) only supports PHP for this task, which is
why I am asking (before further research) if anyone in this list with a
minimum PHP knowledge could write the small needed assembling script.
Just concatenate the menus to the body and give it the body name. 

I think this very very small fix can help a lot the Internet visibility
of the project and I am convinced that there is someone in the list
willing to do this small thing for TeXmacs. 

Thank you in advance, á.



PS. I send this to the users community at large because I think there
may be someone out there with the required knowledge but not necessarily
being a TeXmacs hacker. 

PS2. If Cri74.org finally resolves to allow zope, I offer myself for the
porting and improvement of the site. We would also set up an scheme for
the community to manage the pages without Joris having to worry about
them.


-- 
Álvaro Tejero Cantero

http://alqua.com -- documentos libres
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