mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Henri Lesourd <address@hidden>]

Dennis Heuer wrote:

> hello,
>
> i was trying to write some letters but stepped into quite some problems:
>
> 1. since 1.0.6.12, it seems that the default style doubles the line
> spacing. i couldn't find an option to turn that off except of choosing
> no style at all.
>
>  
Document->Spacing->Interline separation is your friend.


> 2. some options, like bulletin lists, were first visible on the toolbar
> but suddenly gone. i couldn't find menu entries for those options.
>
>  
The related menu entries are Text->Itemize / Enumerate, etc. The
reason they are not available anymore is probably that you went
in math mode, where there are no lists.

Solution : leave the math mode, then create lists, then populate
these lists with math mode items.


> 3. i often seem to create a new outlined area (paragraph or text
> block???) without noticing it. this wouldn't be too bad if not i
> couldn't find a way to combine two outlined areas into one again
> without having to copy over the content of the one area into the other
> and deleting it afterwards.
>
>  
I never observed this.


> 4. when i select some text, i can delete or copy but not overwrite it as
> a whole. the typed in text is just included at the cursor's position. i
> also find it strange that i can move around the cursor and the outline
> doesn't disappear.
>
>  
These things are currently hardwired in the code, one cannot
change them.


> 5. texmacs supports a nice feature i really like. moving the cursor
> close to a differently formatted sequence of text is done in two steps
> of which the first is not overtaking the format and the second will do.
> a similar behaviour is chosen for crossing outlined areas. though this
> makes sense, it is not what is wanted in the common case. it is rather
> an option that should be selected by pressing the control key down
> while moving the cursor or similar. as it is now, it is rather in the
> way and confusing hell a lot.
>
>  
I don't understand what you mean by "outlined areas". If you
mean "selected with the mouse", then no, the behaviour is not
similar for entering formatted items of text and for crossing
selected areas.


> 6. i tried to work with headers, footers, and pagenumbers but only got
> kinds of markers into the text. first they looked like placeholders but
> they were only of normal text and even overtaken as is into the pdf
> file. because i couldn't find documentation on that, i still don't know
> how to work with headers, footers, and pagenumbers.
>
>  
The most efficient way to understand and to work in such context is
to work directly in markup mode (Document->View->Edit source tree).

When you do it, you realize that these "placeholders" are in fact
parameters of markup tags, and you can directly fill in these placeholders
with the appropriate values.


Similarly, the documentation exists, but it is written referring to
these markup constructs, not to how you can build these markup constructs
by means of the GUI. Have a look at :
Help->Reference Guide->TeXmacs primitives
Help->Reference Guide->Stylesheet language


> 7. there doesn't seem to exist a print view, as is common in other text
> writers. this is bad because one doesn't get the overview of how the
> document will look like when it is printed or converted to a pdf file.
> this is especially true for page breaks. a print view is what i
> understand under wysiwyw rather than how it is now.
>
>  
There is :

1. You can run ghostscript to see your document as it
  will appear on the printer ;

2. You can tune the parameters in :
  Document->Page->Type (choose Paper) ;
  Document->View->Page layout
     Show header and footer ;
     Margins as on paper ;

  This way you obtain a view wich is quite exactly
  similar to the printed view.


> 8. creating pdf files with any other default or extra font than roman
> ended in badly rasterized displaying of the document in a pdf viewer.
>
>  
This I don't know why it is.


> 9. i'm not shure if texmacs' pdf suport is pdf-x safe, i.e. the fonts
> are embedded or the full text is vectorized.
Probably not, there is no native .PDF renderer in TeXmacs,
the .PDF file is as a matter of fact obtained by means of
translating the Postscript output (i.e., by means of ps2pdf).


> i really fear writing
> important pdf's in texmacs and sending them via email because i don't
> know how they will look like on the sender's mashine.
>
>  
Usually it works fine for me, but more .PDF knowledgeable
persons could provide a better answer here.


> 10. there seems to be no option to set the title of the document.
> instead, the title seems to always be the path to the temporary
> working folder of texmacs. because the title is shown in the window bar
> of the pdf viewer, this solution is not proper for digital documents
> sent to third parties like customers or employers.
>
>  
I don't think that the title of the PDF viewer's window is
related in any way to the title of the document in the text.

Rather, it is related to the name of the file which contains
the document, at least that's how Acrobat Reader behaves on
my (Linux) machine.


> 11. texmacs seems to circumvent dialog windows. possibly they could help
> here or there. always falling back to the reader in the status bar is
> quite unhandy and often confusing too if the prompt wasn't noticed.
>
>  
Edit->Preferences->Interactive questions->In popup windows


> 12. i tried to save a letter without giving the filename an extension.
> after reloading the file, all text formatting (font, bold etc.) was gone
> and the text looked like written in monospaced terminal font. i wasn't
> able to reformat the text manually too. then i gave the filename the
> first extension i read from the filter line in the save dialog. the
> reloaded text looked like being written with roman font though it was
> written with arial. reformatting didn't work too--only visibly, though,
> because in the status bar the correct font name and style were shown.
> only with the extensions '.ts' and '.tp' i had luck. however, there was
> no documentation on this and i don't really know what this all is up to.
> i'd like to store documents without extension and have them reloaded
> correctly.
>
>  
You cannot store documents without extension in
the current versions of TeXmacs. The ".tm" extension
is mandatory for TeXmacs documents.

Files with any other extensions are always understood
as text without formatting.