mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 06:32:31PM +0100, Alvaro Tejero Cantero wrote:
> > I prefer to be systematic: we also do not insert space after, say, 'sin'.
> 
> I think in this case practicality beats purity, because the variants
> are a fast access mechanism and, in fact, they are not a possibility
> for entering sin. Furthermore, one may want to type sin(a+b) but the
> overwhelming majority of uses of <mathd> are with a single character
> as argument.

Yes, maybe I should make an exception for <mathd>,
or simply consider it as a prefix which does not require any space.

> An idea is that all operators generate (like \sum or \int) their own
> scopes and variants were used to put delimiters of different types or
> no delimiters at all.

This is a bad good idea, because the right hand sides of these scopes
have a border with an inside and an outside position. This is acceptable
for the exceptional case of big operators, but quickly irritating for
more general operators. At the very start of TeXmacs, I experimented
markup for subscripts and superscripts with their base and found it
less natural than the current solution.

> Another context where a faster solution would be very welcome is the
> subindexes (currently ', TAB TAB'). It might be a macro that maps * or
> an accesible key to invisible , when the cursor is in a sub/super
> index.

I am reluctant to make important keys behave in a special way inside scripts,
but agree that ', tab tab' might be too long. I am not sure whether decimal
commas are used more or less often than invisible commas; ', tab' should
be an acceptable solution. Maybe ', ,'; I don't know.

> >> * in the documentation one reads that the upright e,i,pi are entered
> >> with variants, but the e,i,p that appear are in uppercase.
> >
> > Yes, that makes it easier to visually distinguish these special constants,
> > which is also a convention used by several publishers, including Elsevier.
> 
> Maybe I missed something: if I enter (as suggested in the
> documentation) 'E TAB TAB' I get the existential quantifier, not
> <mathe>. Should it be different?

You get the existential quantifier with "Shift+E Tab Tab" in Qt notation.
OK, this is confusing with the traditional TeXmacs way to denote shortcuts...

> >> * changing end-bracket ) to ] by typing the latter didn't work for me
> >> (with or without force-brackets).
> >
> > What did you type in order to enter, say (a,b] ?
> 
> (a,b) then positioned before ) and typed ]. In the order
> (automatically close brackets): (, a, b, ]

This works for me "( a , b ]" yields (a,b].

> If I type (a,b) and then delete ) I cannot enter ] as a substitute,
> but neither can I enter ) ! I have to enter full parentheses and
> delete the opening one.

Strange; do you use the latest SVN version?

> >> Neither did Ctrl-* to toggle fixed-size vs. resizable brackets
> >
> > Where did you try to put the cursor?
> 
> everywhere. May it be an interaction with my kbd mapping:
> 
> ("space" "*")

I doubt that: C-* should work when inside the brackets. It does for me...

Best wishes, --Joris