mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[M Singh <address@hidden>]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 12:14, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
Hi


> Hi Felix,
>
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Felix Breuer wrote:
> > I want to submit an article that I have written using TeXmacs to a
> > journal (Springer's "Mathematische Semesterberichte"). I immediately ran
> > into the following problem:
> >
> > The journal does not accept .tex files that use custom macros. TeXmacs'
> > standart LaTeX export generates quite a number of macros, however. How
> > can I avoid generating these macros?
>
> Hmm, at the moment, I am afraid that we do not provide an option which
> does the substitution of all macros... This should not be really hard
> to implement (could actually be done by a simple bash-tool, probably),
> but would require some time (which I don't have right now).
>
> I suggest you to complain to Springer that they should support
> TeXmacs and at least accept all valid and well-written LaTeX files.
> It is good to pretend not being an expert on typesetting and
> naively be surprised by the fact that Springer does not support
> a "standard" text editor like TeXmacs, which is used by you and
> many of your collegues... ;^)
>
> You may also suggest them to take contact with the TeXmacs authors
> (point to the web-site). Since we already do have a contact with them,
> this will motivate them a bit more to cooperate and remove silly
> policies like what you mention.
>
> Yours, Joris

        I think the basic problem related to this is the current inability of 
texmacs 
to use latex .cls and .sty (or less likely, word template) files. Until that 
is fixed, these kind of issues will keep cropping up. Generating proper latex 
export, as requested by the OP, is but one aspect of seamless 
interoperability with latex. I believe that that is an essential component to 
ensure successful adoption of texmacs over direct latex markup.

        Though I wish the OP the best of luck, journal editing offices, 
conference 
organizers, etc. are usually very very picky about the format of the 
submissions, because their typesetting systems are well tested on a (very) 
small set of word processing / markup languages. And they are card carrying 
members of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" society.

        This is why I had submitted native support of latex class files (or 
at least 
a well supported tool to translate those class files into a form that texmacs 
uses) as an urgent wishlist feature many months ago. I was told then that it 
would be next to impossible to implement.

         Unless a large number of people suddenly start using texmacs and 
pressure 
various journal offices to start supplying texmacs templates (or whatever 
they are called), the chances of new developments at editors desks are 
remote. As it stands, that best bet for a texmacs user is to hope that the 
conference / journal accepts PDF as a valid format (most journals do not) and 
generate PDF from texmacs.

        Please understand that I am not bashing texmacs. I think it is an 
excellent 
idea to combine WYSIWYG with tex quality, but has a fatal weakness on this 
point. 

Just my two cents,

MS