mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Henri Lesourd <address@hidden>]

> Henri
>
> I got new question. It takes long time to refresh the big file as some 
> subfiles contain a lot of math notation now under Windows version.
>
> Do you think it would be faster to update them if the file becomes big 
> and complicated for example for the big book document in Linux than in 
> Windows?
>
> If Texmacs works far more efficient in Linux than in Windows, I would 
> consider to move to work in Linux in the future. Can I have any of 
> your comment?
TeXmacs *should* work approximately at the same speed under Linux
and under Windows. Perhaps in some particular cases it goes really
faster under Linux, but it probably doesn't really happens in the
case of big documents with a lot of math (in this latter case, the
reason why it is slow is really a matter of the design of typesetting
algorithms, not something related to the OS).

The point is that the Linux version of TeXmacs is always a little bit
more up to date than the Windows version, but overall, the behaviour
remains very similar under Linux and under Windows.

What remains is of course that under Linux, things are always a little
bit cleaner and easy to understand : in particular, there is no mess
with the registry under Linux, because there is no registry : everything
is made by means of files. Therefore, things are a little bit easier
if one wants to understand what's happening in case of a problem.

To summarize, TeXmacs is usually a little bit better and up to date
under Linux than under Windows, but the difference should not be very
big, and should become big in the future.


Therefore the choice between Linux and Windows depends much more on what
you do with the OS (e.g. : do you heavily use some Windows-only software
which has no equivalent under Linux ?). If you are completely free to
choose, then my experience is that Linux is better, and more professionnal,
because **everything** is available and easy to understand. In particular,
under UNIX, all the configuration files are **TEXT** files, you never go
into the usual Windows problem, which is that namely, under Windows, all
the data is jailed inside proprietary file formats (e.g. : the data which
defines the users, the different steps of the boot process, etc.).

As a consequence of this user-freedom unfriendly design, Windows
suffers from poor scriptability abilities, and poor understandability
as well ; i.e. : when you want to understand how something
works under Windows, very often, you cannot even **ACCESS**
the information ; on the other hand, under Linux, thanks
to the homogeneity of the data representation used for
config files, which is always text, a bunch of recursive
greps (inside /etc/, for example) usually allows you to
find what you want).

On the other hand, there are more applications under Windows,
which are often better designed from an user interface point
of view (but over the last few years, the choice of non-technical
software applications under Linux has been greatly improved).


All this being said, it's up to you to see what you need, and
to decide what you want to do.


Best, Henri