mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

["Andrey G. Grozin" <address@hidden>]

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006, address@hidden wrote:
> >Currently, WinTeXmacs is not maintained very often. The Cygwin
> >version of TeXmacs (CygTeXmacs), cf. :
> >http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/download/windows.en.html
> >is currently a better choice, it works exactly like the Windows
> >version (but it is heavier...). In the future, we plan to re-synch
> >WinTeXmacs better, but not now.
> If it works exactly like the Windows version, it will probably
> have the same bugs - so that wouldn╢t be any solution.
1. Your bug #1 is not really a bug. If you start axiom (in the text mode) 
and say

)set output tex on

you will see that

xy

produsec the output

$$
xy
$$

and

x*y

produces the output

$$
x \  y
$$

and this '\ ' does produce a little extra space in the math mode. I agree 
that this space is too little. But the only way to change this is to 
re-write TeX generation functions in axiom to produce something other than 
'\ '. So, this was a design decision of the authors of TeX generation in 
axiom (maybe, not the best one).

2. Your bug #2 is really a bug in TeXmacs, and it still exists now. I'll 
report it to Joris.

xy/y

produces

$$
xy \over y
$$

TeX interprets this as $${xy \over y}$$, but TeXmacs interprets this as
$$x{y \over y}$$. When parsing TeX input, TeXmacs should follow TeX rules, 
so, this is a bug, and should be fixed. Note, however, that this situation 
is very rare: it only happens when the fraction is the only element of the 
formula, and both the numerator and the denominator are just single 
variables. For example,

(xy+1)/y

produces

$$
{xy + 1} \over y
$$

and this is interpreted by TeXmacs correctly.

> Furthermore a package of about 80MB only as a graphical frontend
> for a CAS is not really what I want.
> Nevertheless I actually have downloaded it some days ago, but all
> those DOS popup-windows were really annoying, and it was incredibly
> slow compared with WinTeXmacs.
> So I╢ve already deleted this package again and I can╢t say for sure,
> if it gives the same errors as I╢ve described in my first posting
> (but I think so).
> 
> So I╢m still hoping for a solution with WinTeXmacs ... 
WinTeXmacs is dead. This port was based on TeXmacs-1.0.5; the current 
version is 1.0.6.6, and it contains a lot of improvements. The author of 
WinTeXmacs has no time and/or interest to maintain it. Nobody from the 
community of Windows TeXmacs users has demonstrated any desire to help the 
community at large by keeping WinTeXmacs up-to-date.

You should really consider switching to a better OS. In other systems, 
TeXmacs is up-to-date (and bugs are fixed quickly), and this is a rather 
small package, something like 2 Megabytes. Also Windows axiom is not fully 
functional: its help system (which is extremely valuable for learning and 
using axiom) and its graphics system (2d and 3d plots) don't work in 
Windows because they require X. Also, Windows axiom is, as far as I know, 
seriously out-of-date. The current stable version in other systems is 
dated September 2006; I don't know what version you use, but I'm sure it's 
much older.

Thanks for noticing the bug with xy/y. I hope it will be fixed soon 
(maybe, in 1.0.6.7).

Andrey