mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

> Probably the 3 things I miss more of TeXmacs are:
>
> 1. A user guide.

See below.

> 2. Good export to pdf

This will be in the next version.

> (and, sometimes but not frequently, to html)

What about the improved export since version 1.0.2?
What would you suggest the main thing which has still to be done?

> 3. A MS Windows port

Work is being in progress on that.
Notice that you may also use Cygwin, which is really good.

> (I don't use Windows much but my students do)

Do these students all have MikTeX installed?

> Here it's my suggestion of Table of contents of a minimal user guide:
>
> 1. Introduction
>       Reasons to use TeXmacs
>       ¿Emacs + LaTex = TeXmacs?
> 2. Setup
>       Linux: RPM
>       Mac OS X: Fink
>       Other tools: Ghostscript, Maxima, Octave, Xfig,...
> 3. First 30 minutes with TeXmacs
>       Description of the interface
>       ¿TeXmacs is WYSIWYG or WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean)?
>       Sections and enviroments.
>       Save a document
>       Printing and exporting
> 4. A more complex document
>       Header and footer
>       Special characters
>       Fonts and paragraphs
> 5. Equations
>       Edition of equations
>       Numering equations and cross references
> 6. Tables
>       How create a table?
>       Edition
> 7. Graphics
>       Insertion and viculation of graphics
>       Load image dialog
> 8. TeXmacs as an interface
>       Maxima
>       Octave
>       Gnuplot
> 9. Advanced TeXmacs
>       Master document
>       Folds and switches
>       Personal style files
>       Macros, Scheme
>
> This is just the outline of the book I'd like to read about TeXmacs. 
> Obviously
> it's biased to my needs. I don't know if there is any plan to write this 
> kind
> of documentation. Of course, there is a lot of information in the help files
> but sometimes is quite cryptic.

The structure of the documentation can in fact be easily changed,
since we chose to write small pieces of documentation which can then
be put into different orders.

So one should mainly dress a list of which documentation pages miss.
And then you are of course welcome to contribute. At the moment I have
very little time to write documentation. Maybe during spring.

> I try to add interesting comments to this list but I have two big barriers:
> 1) My knowledge of TeXmacs is quite limited

For certain types of documentation it is nevertheless better that people
like you write it. Indeed, I cannot put myself in the skin of someone
who sees TeXmacs for the first time.

> 2) my mastery of English is ridiculous

I did not notice that. In any case, if you write some documentation,
then we can always ask some native English speakers to improve it.