mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[El.Douwen <address@hidden>]

well..
you know i am totally not used with such sherlocking informatics (why does 
texmacs not find the application…)
i dont really want to be used with, for two reasons
- i am not really interested in
- i have an aim, since the moment i discovered texmacs; i would like to 
propose texamcs to the professors of secondary schools in France (lycée)
i resolutely believe that texmacs is the best choice for them.
Most of these people use Ooo or word and some of them don't use a computer at 
home. They need very ready-to-use materials.

In order to get their conviction for texmacs, 4 condition are necessary

- very easy to install -> that's the case now on windows, ubuntu at least, 
and os X (for texmacs alone without extensions)
- very easy to insert geogebra pictures. Indeed, lots of teachers use this 
software. I am not saying that ideally geogebra should interact inside 
texmacs sessions; i kow that geogebra is written in java; but could there be 
an "arrangment" between these two programms, for example one window texmacs 
and one window geogebra are open, and when the texmacs user cliks on "insert 
in the page the active geogebra picture", then texmacs tell gg to save the 
picture to a hidden (.ps) file at a certain path and then import it; 
something transparent for the user. Such a solution sould be very useful, 
because secondary papers for the students often have a geogebra picture. And 
for the moment, you must save the gg picture to a (.ps) file, a dark and 
unknown file for beginners, because the (pdf) export in geogebra presents a 
bug with the filling of figures, and then find it in the path in texmacs, and 
then reducing or enlarging the picture is not really intuitive…
- abilitie to invest as large as possible the space of an A4 paper. Because 
teachers have an obsession : to reduce the number of photocopies. This point 
is not really regardant for the spirit of latex  i confess but one has to be 
pragmatic. It means : easy way to switch 1 column/2 columns, possibility also 
to automatocally print a document as two A5 on an A4 (with all the other 
software i know you first have to duplicate the content before you print 
twice on one page; in texmacs doing this sometimes gives something where the 
hight of paragraphs are not the same in part 1 and in the mirror part 2) , 
easy way to modify the size of fonts (that's effective, super), intuitive 
system to globally modify the margins. I don't know if inserting a floating 
image in order to win space on the paper is something utopic and non-sense in 
a latex spirit programm.
- the last point is the cerise on the cake, possiblity to install easily and 
use easily maxima and professor sessions. This point will achieve convincing 
a great number of secondary teachers, among which i must say, a lot dont 
really even know what latex is. Drawing on a computer the variation table of 
a fonction is for the moment something very acrobatic. With professor it can 
become automatic. And using a formal calculation sofwtare inside the 
text/maths editor is unbelievable for lots of people. What is even better, 
you can modify the entries of maxima sessions each time you open the document.
you are writing in your email all the software addition that one can isntall 
with texmacs :

asymptote / axiom / cadabra / dratex / eukleides / feynmf / fricas / gnuplot 
/ graphviz / gtybalt / lisp (several of them) / lush / macaulay2 / mathemagix 
/ maxima / octave / pari / professor / python (probably, 2.x and 3.x) / qcl / 
R / reduce / sage / scilab / shell (several of them) / sympy / texgraph / 
xypic / yacas

i am using texmacs since some years, i did never heard about 50% of them, and 
i never managed to use on my mac once of them
texmacs is an extraordinary tool for all the jobs that deal with maths, but i 
compare it to the informatic before the apparition of the mouse : something 
quite reserved for people for like swimming in pure informatics questions.
>>> 
>>> in terminal :
>>> my entry    : maxima
>>> the answer : -bash: maxima: command not found
>> 
>> This shows that something is very wrong with your maxima installation. If
>> *you* cannot call maxima, why do you expect TeXmacs to be able to call
>> maxima?

i find this very logical; thought, i dont see clearly the thing. I have 
installed maxima at the place i install all the aplications in os X : that is 
to say ... the folder /Applications
i understand that terminal does not find maxima, and so, you explain that 
texmacs can not find something that terminal doesn't find. ok
i don't realy see how the computer interprets the command "maxima" in the 
terminal. I have an application given with mac os X and called "textedit". If 
in type "textedit" or "Textedit" in the os X terminal, it says "command not 
found". I deduce from this that there is not a terminal command corresponding 
to every os X application. I guess that maybe maxima should be used inside 
the os X terminal ? and of course that's not the case of textedit; so the 
installation of maxima should have installed not only the strict mac os X 
application, but also a sort of unix app that could run under terminal and 
therefor under texmacs ?
>> 
>> I don't use MacOS, so I cannot give a step-by-step instruction. But this
>> problem should be easy enough. What files are installed by the maxima
>> package? Where? Is there a script called "maxima"? Where? Do you have
>> execution permission for it? Is the directory in which it lives in your
>> $PATH?

in the application "/Applications/maxima" that is a sort of bundle as all osX 
apps, i see one folder "contents" with tree elements :
info.plist
MacOS/ containing "Maxima" ("executable unix file")
Ressources/ containing an "Appsetting.plist", an icon, a "maxima.sh", a 
"script", a folder about languages (here only english), a folder /maxima 
containing "bin", "lib", "libexec", and "share"
i type in texmacs the path of "maxima.sh" by draging this file from the 
finder to the terminal window. that is to say : 
/Applications/Maxima.app/Contents/Resources/maxima.sh 
i seems that this operation launches maxima
it is written this :
———
Maxima 5.24.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp SBCL 1.0.42
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information.
(%i1)
———
now two questions :
- if i type 1+1 then press return (or shift return or page break or others 
combinations) nothing occurs
- where do i tell texmacs that the path for maxima is 
/Applications/Maxima.app/Contents/Resources/maxima.sh 
- more generally, what is the method to install a texmacs extension, like the 
ones in the list you gave ?
can we for one day hope having a texmacs menu, like the ubuntu logithèque, 
that would say "select the extension you want to install, make sure that your 
internet connexion is active and wait a minute". With this solution, 
"packages would be modular. Everybody installs what he/she wants."

> Good news: such a bundle already exists:
> install Sage from http://sagemath.org/
> 
> It bundles a lot of open-source math software, including maxima.

i am anchanted to discover this bundle. I will download it soon when i have 
an adsl connexion.
> 
> Once Sage is installed, you can just add
>  /Applications/sage/local/bin
> to your path so that you can call all these bundled programs, and you'll 
> also be able to use them in TeXmacs.
> 
that's precisely the thing i don't know how to do
in the texmacs manual
- the page texmacs plugin, i can read it if anyone tell me it is really 
necessary...
- the page texmacs as an interface dont gives informations about this

> Samuel

thanks a lot

Sacha