mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Anderson Brasil <address@hidden>]

   Thanks a lot for the tip. What about including a chapter with this 
kind of tip at the end of manual? Only an idea. Another sugestion (very 
easy to implement) is to include a menu "open recently used files". It 
would save a lot of time.
   I confess that I don't feel very confortable asking for improvements 
in an open source program which happens I don't have time to help to 
develop (I am taking a doctor degree in mathematics and working full 
time as a professor). Maybe a few years ahead I may try to have a better 
contribution like translations some documents to portuguese (it may be 
hard to believe it, but my portuguese is quite better than my english 
:-p ) or even maybe trying to use my very "rusty" programming knowledge 
and help doing some code.
  
   Cordially,

   Anderson Brasil

=================================================================
"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about
what I accept as reality."
(Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson)
=================================================================


Henri Lesourd escreveu:
> Anderson Brasil wrote:
>
> >   I am having trouble trying to learn texmacs. I have printed on 
> > paper the user manual and looked for a few tutorials on the net, so I 
> > could learn at least the very basic facts. After having decided to 
> > fully imigrate to texmacs, and started to writing slightly more 
> > sofisticated documents, I got stuck. And the help menu didn't help me 
> > at all.
> >    Let me show an example: at this very moment, I am trying to insert 
> > a picture in a document. So I loaded the picture on it by choosing 
> > INSERT/IMAGE/INSERT IMAGE on the menu (actually it didn't worked when 
> > my picture was at PGN format but it was easier to convert it to EPS 
> > than to find out what the problem is). But the picture was too big, 
> > so I need to reduce its side. But there is no way how to do it, at 
> > least not a way I could find. I tried typing F1 and search for 
> > "resize image" and found a page man-images.en.tm when I can read:
> > "(...) By default, images are displayed at their design size. The 
> > following operations are supported on images:
> > 1) Clipping the images following a rectangle. The lower left corner 
> > of  the default image is taken as the origin for specifying a 
> > rectangle for  clipping.
> > 2) Resizing an image. When specifying a new width, but no height at the
> >  prompt (or vice versa), the image is resized so as to preserve the 
> > aspect
> >  ration.
> > 3) Magnifying the image. An alternative way to resize an image, by
> >  multiplying the width and the height by a constant.
> > (...)"
> >
> >    It says that the feature do exists, but do not tell me how to do 
> > it, so it isn't useful at all. It is just a small example about the 
> > kind of dificulty I am having.
>
> There are lots of features that are not implemented in the user 
> interface.
>
> The key to these problems is editing the markup directly : this way,
> you can do **whatever you want**, you directly change the encoding
> of the underlying document. As far as your example about resizing
> an image is concerned, if you switch to source mode by means
> of Document->View->Edit source tree, your image appears
> as, for example :
> [[
> <postscript|file:///home/henri/Scripts/desertAurora.jpg|*5/8|*5/8||||>
> ]]
>
> Then, the only thing you need to do is to change the two "*5/8"
> to something else (e.g. "*3/8"). If you play a little bit, you will
> quicky discover that (among other things), the first second parameter
> of the <postscript|...> markup encodes the width, and the third one
> the height.
>
> In TeXmacs, everything is made by means of markup similar
> to the <postscript|...> in the example above. A more detailed
> introduction to TeXmacs can be found at :
> [[
> http://www.ags.uni-sb.de/~henri/texmacs/aTeXmacsTutorial.pdf
> ]]
>
>
> > The texmac developer(s) is making a really good job on this, but I 
> > still think that the interface need be more polished. With a little 
> > bit of patience, a not very dumb person can learn how to do anything 
> > using microsoft word (or openoffice), but it doens't happen here on 
> > texmacs. At least simple common tasks should have a graphic and 
> > obvious interface, like actions on graphics or turning on/off 
> > pagenumbering (another thing I can't do) and stuff like that. Another 
> > problematic thing about learning texmacs is the keyboard shortcut 
> > used. Windows users (who are 95% of computer users) and most linux 
> > users (like myself)  are so used to type CTRL-Z when they need to 
> > undo things that they do automatically. At texmacs it is replaced by 
> > another keyboard shortcut. Actually, all the behaviour of the editor 
> > is very diferent from what most text editors do (i couldn't tell how 
> > many times I did erased almost the whole document because I've 
> > clicked with the mouse's cursor - trying to set the mouse's cursor in 
> > a certain position as I am used to - and then pressed backspace to 
> > erase a single caracter). 
>
> Changing this is clearly one of our priorities, but its a lot of
> work. One of the problem is there are still, e.g. lots of things
> that are hardcoded in the source code, we need first to abstract
> and modularize better the code of TeXmacs. This task is a
> ongoing task, of which some subgoals are on the tasklist for
> this year (improving the widgets & menus).
>
> On the other hand, I disagree a little bit about your idea that
> a "not very dumb" person would discover the interface easily.
>
> You should rather say that a "Windows familiar" person can
> discover easily the interface of the apps, because there is a
> lot of reuse (e.g. : Ctrl-Z). But knowing the Windows conventions
> has absolutely nothing to do with being dumb or intelligent.
>
> Similarly, emacs-familiar people learn TeXmacs easily, because
> as a matter of fact, TeXmacs reuses the conventions of emacs.
>
> I used to teach using computers to very different kinds of
> people, and in my opinion, this idea that Windows helps
> people, or that it would be "more intuitive", etc., is just
> plain false, in fact it's pure marketing : you see clearly
> this in computer-illiterate people : they really **do not**
> understand Windows before they catch some metaphors
> which enable them to interpret the behaviour of the
> machine. But learn them the UNIX, or the Mac metaphors
> instead, they will learn as easily.
>
> As a matter of fact, as for me, I hate these emacs keyboard
> shortcuts ;-), and I really wait for the time when everything
> will be completely configureable (although with some patience,
> you can already do some things by means of (kbd-map)s).
>
> But on the other hand, I am not sure at all that Windows is
> the pinnacle of computer science...
>
> By the way "Edit->Preferences->Look and feel" could
> perhaps help your Ctrl-Z problem... (you need to exit
> and restart TeXmacs before the changes take effect).
>
>
> >    Two final observations:
> > 1) I am senting those criticisms about the dificulty of learning 
> > texmacs expecting to contribute to make it better, by pointing out 
> > what I think is a major problem about this. I think that the program 
> > is great. The idea is exceptionally good, it just need some polishing.
> > 2) In this list I see a lot of people who knows how to do almost 
> > "esoteric" things, so they somehow have learned it. So I am asking 
> > what is the best way to learn it. How to find the answers when you 
> > got stuck in the middle of a document? (most usually, when you need 
> > urgently to finish it).
> The thing is that these people know the trick with the markup.
> This way, they can invent their own "esoteric" things. You can
> find a (quasi) exhaustive help in Help->Reference guide (look
> especially in the section "TeXmacs primitives").