I find TeXmacs a
wonderful program.
It is quite possible
that its success will be
determined by how many
users and developers it
will be able to attract
(someone I have been
discussing with told it
to me, and I think it is
a sensible statement).
For this reason, I think
the ideas I am going to
list here are worth
discussing, as they may
help attracting users
and developers; maybe
some of them have
already been considered
and rejected, or
considered and will be
implemented - I do not
know. They are important
to me because I would
like to invest my
energies in writing
using TeXmacs with the
idea in mind that I will
be able to edit them in
the future with a new
version of TeXmacs. Of
course I know that
whatever I write, I will
be able to use in the
future too if I save a
copy, say, in LaTeX;
having the idea that it
will continue working in
TeXmacs itself is an
additional help for the
confidence.
Here they are. With of
course the necessary
IMHO in front of
everything.
- TeXmacs should be
re-inserted in the
repositories of all
major Linux
distributions. I know
that it is not in
Ubuntu, and I suspect
that this is because it
is based on Guile 1.8.
Because of this, I
suspect too that this is
already considered and
it will be done :-) But
I list it here all the
same. Being able to
install things with a
click makes it easy to
try things out and so
on.
- The archives of the
mailing list would need,
IMHO, a slightly more
wieldy search interface.
I tried it and it works
nicely, but there is
something a bit off with
it. Perhaps it is just
the matter of tuning the
default appearance of
some elements: for
example, a larger panel
with larger font size
for the search, the menu
for selecting the year
range a bit easier to
use; the results
presented in pages and
with just the titles and
the first few words (so
that they are easier to
evaluate at a glance).
And maybe the
possibility of ordering
the results by
"relevance" (with a good
definition of
"relevance") could also
be nice - of course this
could mean using a
different search engine.
-- Yet for what regards
the archives of the
mailing list, the list
of messages could appear
immediately, without
pressing the button "I'm
not a spammer", which as
far as I can see has no
function; yet again with
different defaults
(larger font, messages
should maybe be on the
foreground rather than
the grid with years and
months)
- A standard way for
users to exchange style
files and macros would
be helpful. Now of
course everyone is free
to post their macros in
the mailing list. What
would help, in my
opinion, is an organized
place where one can go
and look for macros.
Like CTAN for LaTeX. If
this is at the moment
too expensive to
organize, a temporary
solution could be
thought of. Maybe
through GitHub (where
there are the TeXmacs
repositories) or through
some feature of the
mailing list. This seems
to me very, very
helpful, the more
helpful the more it is
working without
supervision - as I think
it could have an
avalanche effect. To
convince oneself, one
can think about the
LaTeX packages that he
likes and uses, and the
ones he does not use but
finds attractive too ...
(for examples of both
kinds in my case:
booktabs, siunitx,
chemfig, mhchem - I had
a look at it just now -
tikz, pgfplots,
fancyhdr, geometry,
listings, cleveref)
- Screenshots of the
current TeXmacs version
appearing in a prominent
place on the website. I
think they help
convincing people to try
the program. The program
itself does the rest of
the convincing.
- Perhaps making it
clear that, since one is
able to save one's work
in LaTeX, whatever one
writes will be available
to them in the future
too (as long as LaTeX is
still there, and we can
be confident about that
I think); so the time
spent writing in TeXmacs
is well invested for
sure: one has *now* the
ease and comfort of use
of TeXmacs and the
stability of LaTeX.
Ok, I am pretty aware
that I have just arrived
here. If it helps, it
helps, if not ... not
:-)