- From: luis jaime salazar ramírez <address@hidden>
- To: address@hidden
- Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] I like write a Tesis
- Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:39:31 -0500
Hi, Javier:
Is a good question but I feel lovely by Texmacs and I feel more
comfortable whit it. Moreover, I will exam this posibility.
Thanks.
att,
luis jaime
El mar, 12-07-2011 a las 16:41 +0200, Javier Arántegui escribió:
>
Hi,
>
>
If you plan to use TeXmacs to write your thesis and then use LaTeX to
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create the final document, why don't you use something like LyX?
>
>
Javier
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>
>
El 12/07/2011, a las 16:19, luis jaime salazar ramírez escribió:
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>
> Hola Pablo:
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>
>
> Gracias por tu respuesta, la verdad yo he detectado varios de los
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> problemas que me transcribes, pero no los había escrito por falta de
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> tiempo, y aunque no lo quería aceptar, creo que la opción es esta, es
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> decir, escribir en TeXmacs y refinar en LaTeX.
>
>
>
> Como dice el texto, no hay formas sencillas para usuarios noveles para
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> que manejen el programa en asuntos que ya están estandarizados y hace
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> falta solucionar problemas de estabilidad del programa. Lo anterior no
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> quiere decir que no me parezca una herramienta importante para disminuir
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> el tiempo de edición: lo que antes en LaTeX hacía en 4 horas, ahora lo
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> puedo hacer con TeXmacs en menos de dos horas y eso para mí es
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> importante, tal vez por ello me he acostumbrado a esquivar las
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> combinaciones de teclas que hacen que el programa se caiga, y alguno que
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> otro aspecto indeseable, etc.
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>
>
> Me gustaría saber qué pasó con este hilo, que ha respondido Joris al
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> respecto.
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>
>
> Gracias, nuevamente por tu ayuda.
>
>
>
> att,
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>
>
>
>
> Luis Jaime
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> El lun, 11-07-2011 a las 17:19 +0200, Pablo Angulo escribió:
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>> Hola!
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>>
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>> Te copio-y-pego un email que llegó a la lista hace unos meses, de un
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>> tipo que acababa de escribir su tesis con texmacs. Yo estoy en la misma
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>> tesitura y casi que me inclino por escribir los capítulos por separado y
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>> pasarlo a latex cuando termine:
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>>
>
>>> I just finished a major project (thesis) using TeXmacs, and I wanted
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>>> to share some experiences. The project has about 200 pages and 40
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>>> floats. I have been using TeXmacs for several years now, and until now
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>>> regularly used TeXmacs for the "draft" phase of various documents (for
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>>> which it really shines), and used LaTeX for the final typesetting.
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>>> However, this time I chose to use TeXmacs from the beginning to the
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>>> end. I found myself developing so many workaround that I thought I'd
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>>> share them, in case anyone wants to take a similar path, and so that
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>>> maybe Joris (or someone else who knows the sources) can fix some of
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>>> the bugs.
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>>>
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>>> Don't get me wrong, I like TeXmacs, and it works very well for small
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>>> documents. However, I think TeXmacs can only compete with LaTeX if it
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>>> provides a solid stable foundation that users and publishers can
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>>> depend on. While LaTeX needs a huge amount of work in order to get an
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>>> acceptable workflow, when correctly set up it is rock solid. TeXmacs
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>>> is easy to get used to, but extremely crashy when trying to do
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>>> non-basic operations. With hindsight, I have to say that had I known
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>>> all the problems I have encountered, I had probably chosen LaTeX, from
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>>> which I know that it is hard to get used to, but it is stable. It is
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>>> very frustrating having to deal with mysterious crashes and figuring
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>>> out workarounds close to the deadline.
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>>>
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>>> Currently it seems that new features are added all the time, such as
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>>> the vector graphics editor. In my opinion TeXmacs has more than enough
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>>> innovative features and flexibility by now to beat any other
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>>> scientific editor, but long-term usability is just bad. With respect
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>>> to the list below, I think that the upmost priority should be to get
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>>> the existing code as stable and fast as possible (in particular for
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>>> large documents), and to get the stylesheet language as solid and as
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>>> well-documented as possible. Otherwise TeXmacs will never get a
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>>> substantial user base.
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>>>
>
>>> That said, this is the list. It is organized in three parts: dangerous
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>>> things than can ruin the output by silently introducing errors,
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>>> annoying things that are just counter-intuitive or take a lot of time
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>>> getting used to, and performance issues that are relevant when editing
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>>> large documents. I loosely ordered the items in order of descending
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>>> importance.
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>>>
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>>> 1) Dangerous things
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>>> -------------------
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>>>
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>>> 1a) Deleted references: TeXmacs indefinitely remembers references it
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>>> has once seen. If I create a <label>, reference it using <reference>
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>>> and then delete the <label>, the reference is unchanged (even after
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>>> Document > Update > All, multiple times), while it should display "?"
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>>> instead. This can create very hard-to-spot errors in your document. As
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>>> a workaround, I manually opened the .tm file and deleted everything in
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>>> the <\references> and <\auxiliary> sections, which forces TeXmacs to
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>>> regenerate everything, and searched for "?" in the PDF to check if
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>>> there are any undefined reference. However, this should never happen
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>>> in the first place. Moreover, there should be an indicator/warning if
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>>> there are any undefined references or "cite"s in the document.
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>>>
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>>> 1b) .tm~ Files: By default, the "File > Load" (BTW, why not "Open"?)
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>>> dialog shows all file types (in fact there is no option to restrict it
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>>> to TeXmacs files, e.g. .tm + .ts). In particular, it shows the .tm
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>>> files side by side with their .tm~ files. It is very easy to mis-click
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>>> the .tm~ file, which in an unfortunate setting may mean that you lose
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>>> all of your work. TeXmacs should either not allow to open .tm~ files
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>>> at all, hide them by default, or at least issue a warning when the
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>>> user tries to open one.
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>>>
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>>> 1c) Page Setup: There are two places where the page size can be set:
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>>> Under File > Page Setup and under Document > Page > Size. At the
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>>> least, the menu should be called "Print setup". Such things sound like
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>>> minor issues, but anyone will FIRST find the prominent "Page setup"
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>>> menu, change the size there, and assume that it did the trick, when
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>>> all that is changed is the print setup. This issue alone cost me 15
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>>> hours of re-breaking the whole document close to the deadline.
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>>>
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>>> 1d) Document > Magnification: This is a similarly dangerous item,
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>>> which should at least issue a warning that it changes the FONT SIZE,
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>>> i.e. the amount of text that fits on a page. This is very easy to
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>>> confuse with View > Shrinking factor. If you are required to submit an
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>>> 11pt document and accidentally mess with the "Magnification" you are
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>>> in trouble, since TeXmacs will display 11pt font size, but it won't be
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>>> 11pt in print.
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>>>
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>>> 1e) Consistency: I do not know how exactly, but I managed to get two
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>>> installations of TeXmacs 1.0.7.10 that work exactly the same, except
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>>> that in one copy the *bold* fonts (and only those) are a tiny bit
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>>> wider. Therefore headings (and figures for captions) wrap differently.
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>>> I have no idea if the font was changed recently or if the issue is
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>>> caused by the setup, but in order to be exchangeable TeXmacs should
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>>> make absolutely sure that documents look 100% the same when compiled
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>>> on different systems (maybe use a checksum on the font files?). This
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>>> one took me one day to figure out.
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>>>
>
>>> 1f) Sums & Integrals: There seems to have been a semantic change with
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>>> respect to sums and integrals, which are now considered as "functions"
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>>> (i.e. they have an argument), rather than just a symbol. This
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>>> introduced a nasty behavior: If one creates an integral (say
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>>> <big-around|<int>|<rsub|0><rsub|1>xyz>), puts the cursor at the end
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>>> and presses "backspace" in order to delete the x, the <int> sign at
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>>> the front is deleted instead! This is actually very easy to miss if
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>>> you press "backspace" multiple times, e.g. in order to delete multiple
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>>> characters, and corrupts the formulas. Instead, the last character
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>>> should be deleted.
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>>>
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>>> 1g) PDF Export: Embedded raster images (especially black & white) look
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>>> ugly in the exported PDF. They seem to be compressed as very
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>>> low-quality JPG, with clearly visible JPEG artifacts especially in
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>>> purely black/purely white regions. The only workaround is to export as
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>>> PS and convert to PDF manually using Ghostscript:
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>>>
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>>> gswin32c -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER
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>>> -dPDFX -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dAutoFilterColorImages=false
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>>> -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false
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>>> -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode -sOutputFile=thesis.pdf -c save pop -f
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>>> thesis.ps
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>>>
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>>> There should be a menu item to change the "PS to PDF" command, and a
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>>> better preset.
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>>>
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>>> 1h) Document > Update: One of the things that annoy me most when using
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>>> LaTeX is that it doesn't automatically
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>>> perform another run if it is required in order to get all the
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>>> references right. However, LaTeX at least issues a warning. Using
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>>> TeXmacs there is no warning, but the same annoying process of Document
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>>> * click * Update * click * all * wait * Document * click * Update *
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>>> click * etc. about 5 times in a row to be sure that all references are
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>>> up-to-date. In my opinion, TeXmacs should automatically perform as
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>>> many runs as required so that the labels do not change anymore.
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>>>
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>>> 1i) Breaking of inline math: Inline formulas that are wrapped around a
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>>> line ending are just plain ugly. For this reason LaTeX does not wrap
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>>> them by default, and issues an "overfull hbox" warning instead.
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>>> TeXmacs wraps them quietly, which requires to manually check every
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>>> single line if it contains a silently wrapped inline formula.
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>>>
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>>> 1k) Style files: I use a custom macro package for shortcuts, pretty
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>>> formatting of algorithms, etc. All documents are in a Subversion
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>>> repository, so it regularly happens (by an "svn update") that a style
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>>> file changes without TeXmacs noticing (TeXmacs is not running during
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>>> the "svn update"). I regularly found TeXmacs marking "undefined
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>>> macros" in the main document, when they were cleary defined in the
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>>> package file. It took me about 2 months to figure out that the styles
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>>> need to be refreshed using "Tools > Update > Styles", and that
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>>> restarting TeXmacs does NOT help. Why this doesn't happen
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>>> automatically when TeXmacs is restarted is completely
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>>> counter-intuitive. However, it may mess up your whole document, or
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>>> make it use old macros, which both is very dangerous.
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>>>
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>>> 2) Annoying things
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>>> ------------------
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>>>
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>>> 2a) Stylesheet Language: I had to implement some extensions using the
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>>> stylesheet language. If one goes one step beyond the standard
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>>> functionality, TeXmacs crashes at the blink of an eye. I found myself
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>>> spending about 20% of the time figuring out a solution for a problem,
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>>> and then spending 80% of the time trying 4 other solutions until I
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>>> find one that doesn't crash TeXmacs. While LaTeX can also be
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>>> incredibly tiresome to work with, it is solid as a rock. I think if
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>>> TeXmacs aims at production quality and use in professional
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>>> environment, these issues -- which mostly concern power-users --
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>>> desperately need to get fixed. Also, there needs to be a clear
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>>> documentation of the evaluation order of the document tree. I spent
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>>> several hours trying to figure out the exact semantics of the various
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>>> "quote" tags, and eventually gave up.
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>>>
>
>>> 2b) Images: I found that the only image type that can be reliably used
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>>> in Texmcas is EPS written by Ghostscript. PNG tends to crash TeXmacs
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>>> with a memory overflow when exporting to PS, I found myself finally
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>>> converting all raster images to EPS in order to get it to work. EPS
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>>> files written by other applications (e.g. Illustrator) often result in
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>>> zero-byte .PS files, or .PS files that are truncated at the page that
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>>> contains the EPS. The workaround is to run Ghostscript's "eps2eps" on
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>>> all .EPS files, which creates .EPS files that TeXmacs doesn't crash on.
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>>>
>
>>> 2c) Menu Layout: Generally, I found that TeXmacs menus are laid out in
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>>> the way TeXmacs thinks about the document, not in the way that is most
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>>> intuitive for the user. For example, inserting a float is done via
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>>> "Format > Page > Insertion > Floating Object". I think the "Format"
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>>> menu is the last place that anyone would look, in particular when
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>>> there is a top-level "Insert" menu. Other examples: Tools > Update
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>>> menu and Document > Update menu with similar functions but at
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>>> different places, the same holds for Edit > Preferences > Keyboard and
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>>> Edit > Preferences > Mathematics > Keyboard.
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>>>
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>>> 2d) Bugs when using parts: There is an ugly bug when working with
>
>>> parts that causes TeXmacs to reproducibly crash at harmless actions
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>>> such as selecting text across a chapter boundary (see my previous
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>>> posts on this list).
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>>>
>
>>> 2e) Yes/No Dialog: Is there any reason for the cumbersome "yes/no"
>
>>> prompt? Having to backspace away the "no" and type "yes" is very VERY
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>>> annoying. Even a simple "y"/"n" choice with one keypress would have
>
>>> been more usable. Similarly for the strange Qt "yes/no" dialog with
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>>> the combobox. This should just use the default yes/no dialog that is
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>>> provided by all OS and by Qt.
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>>>
>
>>> 2f) Extensible brackets: With the automatic extensible brackets there
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>>> was apparantly introduced a bug: When extensible brackets are turned
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>>> off (Edit > Preferences > Keyboard > Mathematics > Use extensible
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>>> brackets), I am unable to insert extensible brackets anymore, even
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>>> using the toolbox icon ("Insert large delimiter"). On the other hand,
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>>> if I turn extensible brackets on, I cannot type left angles anymore
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>>> ("<" + 5x TAB), it just displays as "<left-<langle>-0>". I ended up
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>>> copy & pasting either the large brackets or the angles each time I
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>>> needed them.
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>>>
>
>>> 2g) Editing large documents: TeXmacs should be able to view separate
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>>> parts of a document in different windows. Currently this is not
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>>> possible, which makes creating references in large documents very
>
>>> slow: Switch to other part * wait * look up label * Switch back to
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>>> current part * wait * insert label. The same holds for copy & pasting.
>
>>> Editing the whole document in one window is too slow.
>
>>>
>
>>> 2h) Search: The search function needs a window, which should be
>
>>> non-modal. A very common task is to search for all occurrences of a
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>>> text and change something close to that text which cannot be automated
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>>> (for example search for all "TODO" and remove them, fix them, or
>
>>> ignore them). The problem is that after typing something, the
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>>> (apparently undocumented) "Search next" shortcut (F3) does not work
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>>> anymore, and one has to type Ctrl+F + the whole search phrase again,
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>>> every single time. The layout for the "Search" dialog box is be quite
>
>>> standard by now (at least on Windows systems): "Match Case",
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>>> "Up/Down", "Find Next", "Cancel". The same holds for the "Search &
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>>> Replace" function.
>
>>>
>
>>> 2i) Windows Version: I couldn't get the Windows version to compile, I
>
>>> ended up installing TeXmacs under Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM, and using
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>>> a shared folder to access the .tm files on the Windows drive.
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>>>
>
>>> 2k) Redraw errors: When I show the whole document (Part > Show all
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>>> parts), I frequently get redraw errors, where text from the current
>
>>> page and text from a completely different section at the end of the
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>>> document are draw on top of each other, resulting in garbage text. The
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>>> workaround is to force a redraw e.g. using "page down" + "page up".
>
>>>
>
>>> 2l) Zooming: Zooming in and out should be seamless e.g. using
>
>>> Ctrl+scroll wheel, as is standard in most applications, instead of the
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>>> "View > Shrinking factor" workaround.
>
>>>
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>>> 2m) TeXmacs frequently loses its configuration and displays the
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>>> "Welcome to your new TeXmacs system" screen.
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>>>
>
>>> 3) Performance
>
>>> --------------
>
>>>
>
>>> 3a) Editing anything above about 15 pages in "Paper" mode is just too
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>>> slow to be usable. A part of the problem is that TeXmacs updates the
>
>>> whole document at every keypress. Since this cannot always be avoided,
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>>> e.g. when re-wording some sentences in order to get a prettier line
>
>>> wrap, I ended up typing text fragments in an external editor, and copy
>
>>> & pasting them into TeXmacs as a block in order to avoid the update at
>
>>> every keypress. If views the whole document ("Parts > All") and
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>>> accidentally types a complete word (with, say 10 characters), it is
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>>> faster to kill TeXmacs, restart it and reload the document than having
>
>>> to wait for the updates.
>
>>>
>
>>> 3b) Editing paragraphs that contain floats or captions of figures that
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>>> contain images is incredibly slow, even in very small documents.
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>>>
>
>>> 3c) The same holds for the "Papyrus" mode when some floats are
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>>> present. The unsatisfying workaround is to insert only figures while
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>>> working with the text, and converting them to floats just before
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>>> creating the final PDF.
>
>>>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
>
Javier Arántegui
>
Dept. Tecnologia de Alimentos / Dept. of Food Technology
>
Universitat de Lleida / University of Lleida (Spain)
>
>
Tel. +34 973702595
>
Fax +34 973702596
>
http://www.tecal.udl.es
>
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