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Re: [TeXmacs] TeXmacs name


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  • From: Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden>
  • To: address@hidden
  • Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] TeXmacs name
  • Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:25:30 +0100
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There were lots of name suggestions in the following discussion, also
please bear in mind the concerns about availability of domain names.

http://etherpad.com/jtzJxcpeV4

Álvaro.



On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 09:13, Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden> wrote:
> Dear Madhusudan,
>
> I am afraid you're wrong.
>
>> I think that TeXmacs is almost the perfect name for the program.
>
> Yes if the target is to confuse everybody.
>
> It has TeX
>> support,
>
> Wrong. It exports (not 1:1) to LaTeX, runs BibTeX for the bibliography
> and can use TeX fonts. Employing TeX in the name triggers the wrong
> expectations - you seem yourself not to have understood what the
> program does alone from the name... Once more: TeXmacs has its own
> typesetter. It does not run TeX for positioning boxes.
>
>> and is almost as versatile as Emacs.
>
> for many people (especially the target group of TeXmacs) the
> association upon hearing "Emacs" is to a horribly complicated program,
> that requires learning arcane keybindings even for the most basic
> operations, that uses a weird terminology and that sports a cryptic
> and nonstandard interface.
>
> N.B. I am a happy user of Emacs myself, I am here just portraying a
> very common reaction independently of whether it does justice to
> Emacs.
>
> If you'd like to underline the programmable aspect of the editor, I
> don't think this is of interest to users that don't know yet the
> program. A really important property of TeXmacs however is that it
> treats the document as an structured tree which can be modified live.
>
>  I would have perhaps preferred
>> something like SciTeXWriter (or SciTeXmaster, given that it is more than
>> just a writer), but TeXmacs does nicely.
>
> No mumble-jumble of amputated words can do justice to a reasonably
> featureful piece of software. Following that rule one could call Paris
> SeinEiffCoeursées.
>
>> Your other proposed name is obscure sounding, and if anything,
>
> _Your_ name sounds obscure to me. I hope you understand that this is a
> relative perception and that you cannot fully satisfy a global
> audience. You just need something unique enough and to dispense with
> the need for denotation (you can still use connotation). Quipu would
> become familiar as well as any other name; surely we will receive
> other good suggestions.
>
> does not
>> convey anything about the functionality of the program to the potential
>> userbase.
>
> The current one gets the wrong message across.
>
>> Name changes are usually fraught with confusion, and unless there
>> is a really massive upside, best not done.
>
> The upcoming release of a QT-based version is exactly the opportunity.
> TeXmacs is massively undermarketed in regard to what is capable of
> doing.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Álvaro.
>
>> With regards.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Gubinelli Massimiliano
>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> (almost crossposting from address@hidden)
>>> Dear all,
>>>  I would like to revive once more the debate on the name for the
>>> TeXmacs program. There are many reasons for believing that the current
>>> name does not serve very well the popularity of the program. I've just
>>> come across to another possibility (among many other already proposed
>>> and lost somewhere in the internet):
>>> *  Quipu (or kipu, or khipu) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu).
>>> Apparently this is the ancient way Incas had to keep various kind
>>> of  informations and seems to mean "knot" so there is some link with
>>> mathematics and with structured information. The images of Quipus make
>>> me think to trees (of TeXmacs tags).
>>>
>>> Here en excerpt of the wikipedia page (nice and worth reading)
>>>
>>> "
>>> Most of the information recorded on the quipus consists of numbers in
>>> a decimal system;[1] see The encoding system below.
>>> Some of the knots, as well as other features such as color, are
>>> thought to represent non-numeric information, which has not been
>>> deciphered. It is generally thought that the system did not include
>>> phonetic symbols analogous to letters of the alphabet. However Gary
>>> Urton has suggested that the quipus used a binary system which could
>>> record phonological or logographicdata.
>>> "
>>>
>>> Another possible name :
>>> * Tiamat (Tiamat is another mathematical authoring tool)
>>> which has the benefit to allow to conserve the extension .tm
>>> Best,
>>> Massimiliano
>>> ps: thanks to Martin for correcting my previous post on texmacs-dev.
>>
>

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