mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>]

Dear Francois,

Thank you for your detailed summary of wishes.
We are still in the process of improving the interface,
building on the new possibilities offered by Qt.
Many of your suggestions are already on our list,
but it will still take some time before they will get implemented.

Best, --Joris


On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:08:50PM +0200, François Beaubert wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm exploring Texmacs again and must admit that I'm loving it more and
> more, especially with it's new qt interface.
> Like others in this list I see a huge potential of Texmacs for our
> scientific community and I'm rather surprised that this excellent
> piece of software is not used so much compared to Lyx and other
> Tex/latex IDE. For me Texmacs is much more powerful and sexy. It
> perhaps only lacks some features that are present on Lyx or  other
> Latex IDE.
> 
> Yes, I must confess that I'm coming from the dark side (Latex -> Lyx)
> and enjoyed it a lot.
> I'm new to Texmacs so forgive me if my questions, suggestions are not
> useful or have obvious answers. My only goal is to suggest some ideas
> to try to enhance the usability of Texmacs. Maybe you will find some
> suggestions useful ...
> 
> Before trying Texmacs, I was using Lyx for my daily work. I would like
> to share some useful features I found in Lyx that I was not able to
> find in Texmacs (I may have missed them) and some suggestion that
> perhaps only Texmacs could achieve the right way.
> 
> Navigation in the document:
> -------------------------------------
> Perhaps better than a menu, Lyx has gui widget docked on the left of
> the document window which show the tree of the:
> 
> o Table of contents
> o List of figures
> o List of tables
> o List of equations
> o List of labels and references
> o and so on ...
> 
> Very, very handy  ... see screenshots
> You can even move whole chapters, sections within this docked widget
> 
> Labels, References and Citations
> ----------------------------------------------
> o When inserting a label Lyx auto-magically suggests a label based on
> the current environment. For example: sec: if in a section
> environment, eq: if in an equation, etc ...
> o When including  a reference/citation Lyx help the user with a GUI in
> which you can sort, filter, group and the select the kind of
> reference/citation you would like to have for a label/bib-entry. See
> screenshot.
> 
> Word Completion and spell check correction
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> o The completion mechanism in Lyx suggests the possible completion via
> a list overlay of the different candidates just under the current
> word. I find it better than shell like completion. But the completion
> feature of the references for example in Texmacs is indeed very very
> handy.
> o inline spell-checking with the misspelled word underlined in red,
> suggestions could appear in a overlay list with a right mouse click
> (like in word, libreoffice and lyx for example)
> 
> Multiple documents and multiple views of the same document
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> o Tabs support (like in Firefox, Chrome, etc) could greatly enhance
> document switching
> o Splitting (vertical, horizontal) the current document view could
> allow the possibility of viewing two different parts of the same
> document
> 
> Emacs like org-mode+babel
> ---------------------------------------
> o For Emacs hardcore users (like me :) ) I see an huge potential in
> Texmacs to achieve the same goal:  keeping scientific notes,
> spreadsheets tables, ideas and small executable piece of code in the
> same environment
> o Tag classification support (as in org-mode) enables the user to find
> all the notes belonging to a tag.
> 
> o http://orgmode.org/
> o http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html
> 
> Beamer like document style
> --------------------------------------
> 
> o the current implementation of the beamer  style looks very powerful
> but I was not able to find a good tutorial to really understand all
> the concepts and features of the style.
> o enhance the current theme with more eye friendly environment like:
>    * more kind of frames or boxes: shadow, rounded, color gradient
> fill for Title, sections, equations
>    * define differents colorthemes for the text, the equation, the
> slides/section titles, background, etc
>    * logos
>    * numbered sections, subsections, etc ...
>    * do not mask completely the next switches but instead allow the
> user to make them appear in gray or something like
>    * the best is perhaps to go to
> http://www.hartwork.org/beamer-theme-matrix/ to have a better idea of
> what I mean
> o possibility to have a compact table of contents in each slide with
> hyperlinks capabilities for an easy presentation navigation
> o video support inclusion
> o export to pdf
>    * full version with all the screen switches
>    * handout version
> o enhance the current drawing capabilities to be able to draw box
> around terme of equation, arrows between elements, etc (like pgf/tikz
> for Beamer)
> 
> Yes I've finished. Sorry for this long list of suggestions. To me the
> last two (Org-mode/Babel + Beamer) are perhaps the most interesting
> ones.
> Don't misunderstood me, Texmacs is for me an excellent software.
> Texmacs features are unique in the scientific community. I just want
> to try to help with some ideas that may be useful for the project.
> 
> Wish you the best and long life to Texmacs !
> Cheers
> 
> Francois