mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Henri Lesourd <address@hidden>]

el.douwen wrote:

> my question now is:
>
> -------------------- question ----------------------
> I am a lambda user of texmacs
> i just want to type maths
> not to be a master of linux, terminal, xterm, unix...
>
> Do you think it would be [possible/easy/difficult/impossible]
> to have one day a system to instal -simply- the software
>
> i mean, downloading a "texmacs.installer" and jut double clic on it
The current install of CygTeXmacs is like this, there is only
something broken somewhere (as far as I remember), which necessitates
you opening a Cygwin console. But it is easy to find, for after
the install, a new folder for Cygwin has been created in the Start
Menu. And once you started your Cygwin console, you are under bash,
thus it is simply a UNIX shell.

To summarize: you (perhaps) need to click on the right checkbox
in the Installshield to be able to get the shell link in the
start menu (1). You need to know how to run a command in the
UNIX shell (2).

> an installer that would
> - verify if latex is installed or not

No.

> - install latex if necessary

No.

> - dezip the right files

Yes.

> - under windows: start cygwin before running texmacs

Currently broken.

> - etc. and at the end you can just.. type maths
Yes.

> i mean, i concess that under leopard it was not so difficult to  
> install texmacs
> but there are always things to think to, i would have never imagined  
> them
> for example: starting cygwin...
It's like on Macs, you need to know how to activate X11.

> so is it [something impossible/that would come soon/that will comme  
> maybe one day/that can be written in one day]
> to have a -simple- installator of texmacs ??
There's nobody taking care of that now. And for the hard
issues maked "no" above, I'm afraid its close to impossible,
for they are really difficult.

The problem is: how to install UNIX applications under Windows
is horribly complex and incompatible, this is a problem which
goes far beyond TeXmacs.

Namely, for compiling, you have to convert the autoconf plus
automake system to the windows world, which is not easy. For
installing and detecting installed applications, the UNIX and
Windows systems are completely incompatible, it's just not the
same way. And finally, UNIX apps usually tend to depend on a
myriad of other packages, e.g. perl, awk, Ghostview, netpbm,
etc., which makes porting a software to Windows often extremely
hard, and incomplete if you want to do it in a native way.

This is (partly) why we decided to start the Qt port of TeXmacs,
in order to clean the code from X11-related code and thus to
pave the way for a native port, but this way we don't address
the (huge) problem of porting all the UNIX software which works
with TeXmacs (e.g. LaTeX, various computer algebra systems, etc.).

This is also why initially (and still now), the TeXmacs port
to Windows was done by means of a complete UNIX emulation
layer, i.e. Cygwin. The problem is that nowadays, Cygwin
tends to abandonware, and in any case, it was never really
well integrated with Windows.

==> The problems you mentioned.


There is no easy way to solve the problem, except investing
resources in *really* solve the problem of unix installs &
builds to turn those cross-platform. To my knowledge, there
is currently no cross-platform project addressing these
problems correctly and completely. Thus if you want to
solve a important problem, which stands in the way of
many software projects, become famous, etc., you know
what you have to do now :-)...

Another way would be to look at other UNIX emulation
layers under Windows, Cygwin is not the only game in
town anymore, there are better ones, now.


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