mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Sam Liddicott <address@hidden>]

My daughter is producing interview transcripts in a notation like this:

My daughter is producing interview transcripts in a notation like this:

Tim: and sometimes you have to [consult with the      ] with the parents
Jon:                           [well you don't have to]
Tim: well you should consult [with them   ]
Ali:                         [well we know] we know you should but
     sometimes you can't do that, it's not always possible to do that

What she has to do is using word or open office, overlay large braces onto the document but it is very badly anchored and a difficult process. The text example shows single [ characters but in reality it is a brace spanning multiple lines.

I've tried to work out an abstract model for it to see if TeXmacs could handle it as anchored braces, and the model is this.

Named open-brace and named close-brace.

Each instance of a named brace is left-padded with white space so that each brace of the same name has the same horizontal position. The brace is drawn with the top at the first occurrence with the bottom at the last occurrence.

The harder bit is that text must not overlay the brace or vice-versa so when there are multiple lines between the top and bottom of the brace, typesetting must skip over the brace.

Braces need not come in pairs.

The UI could have 2 actions, insert named brace (open or close) and insert previous named brace.

However I think that TeXmacs typesetting is not able to manage the wrapping around brace parts - is this the case?

Sam