mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[luis jaime salazar ramírez <address@hidden>]

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