mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

> Is a texmacs class file pure text ? If so, as I suspect it is, what is the
> exact problem in writing a program that parses a latex class file and o/p's 
> a
> texmacs class file ? Like \topmargin etc. could be mapped into some texmacs
> equivalent, or emph, bold face, \vspace, etc. could be similarly mapped.

Have you *ever* looked at a complete class file, like svjour or elsart,
as used by publishing companies? You will recognize that writing
an automized converter for such files is as at least as much work
as converting the 25 mostly style files by hand.

> You do not understand an editor's point of view there. They (especially in
> case of larger journals) do not have the resources or the time (or even the
> inclination - for fear of messing up their manuscript processing systems) to
> deal with typesetting systems for which there is little / no well tested
> markup environment, and the number of people who are insistent enough (and
> few prospective authors are - they are trying to get published first, not
> teach the editors new things) and simply refuse to use Word / LaTeX, is
> miniscule.

It is up to TeXmacs users to make this change. If you saved half an hour on
typing your article using TeXmacs, then you may take five minutes to write
a small request to the editor to accept TeXmacs as a new format.

> 1. Ease of use gradually draws in users, many of whom leave because
> professional publishing houses / journals etc. do not accept the .tm format.
> This would probably lead to texmacs becoming another groff or lout or even 
> an
> elaborate abiword of sorts. Not a good prospect for an application otherwise
> so well thought out.
>
> 2. Development of two things - a good importing system that reads in .cls
> and .sty files and o/p's texmacs style files , and as the OP wanted, a
> sensible, non macro based latex export system. This could really light the
> fire under texmacs. Many people would still prefer to use LaTeX directly, 
> but
> the new users would naturally gravitate towards texmacs.
>
> Of course you might say that it is not your job to make sure that texmacs
> becomes widely used or even the de facto standard. However, from an open
> source viewpoint, the larger the user base you have, the larger the number 
> of
> possible bugs discovered, and nicer the final product.

It definitely is not my job to make a 100% reliable converter from/to
a rotten, obsolete and ill-defined TeX/LaTeX format from/to our format.
I am getting really tired about TeX/LaTeX compatability complaints,
especially because people do not even *try* to push editors to
accept our format (or Pdf).

I have the impression that the huge amount of effort I put in improving
LaTeX compatability is never sufficient, so this is basically a huge
waste of my time. I also consider the current export filter to be good
enough for my personal purposes (I rarely experience problems and they
are always easy to correct) and it certainly is 99% reliable at least.
The only thing I can possibly do is make it easier to write LaTeX directly
in TeXmacs so that it is easy to manually put LaTeX code there where
TeXmacs is unsufficient for export purposes.

In the future, I rather plan to stabilize and well-document the editor
as it is (both for users and developers). We are also working on a mode
for editing pictures (new conversion problems), and I will still add
some tools for annotation and web-services. If scientists still prefer
to use Vi-LaTeX for writing papers, then so be it.