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Re: [TeXmacs] The "social" side of TeXmacs development


Chronological Thread 
  • From: address@hidden
  • To: Massimiliano Gubinelli <address@hidden>
  • Cc: TeXmacs <address@hidden>, address@hidden
  • Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] The "social" side of TeXmacs development
  • Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:07:50 +0200
Dear Massimiliano,
thanks for this.

I have taken the liberty to copy in there a question asked on the mailing list by

Alkis Akritas of 3 Dec 2018. Like someone else suggested in this thread, the mailing list is a good source for questions.

As far as I understand it helps to use one's own votes in a sensible way: upvotes given to a question which has already many upvotes, for example, will not contribute to the passing of the stage, as that question would have been counted without our upvote too.



Am 03.04.2019 13:57 schrieb Massimiliano Gubinelli

Dear all,
following the clear interest expressed on the list about the
possibility of a stack exchange section, I’ve just proposed one
named “TeXmacs”

You can access it with the following link:

https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/121978/texmacs?referrer=kx6OG2kzsntvCBnp7y8WZQ2
[3]

I’m new to the process, so not very much sure how to go on. It is
currently in a “staging” area and will be scrutinised for
activity, so I would suggest we try to be active (with questions and
answers) to see if it a viable solution to the persistence of the
user’s knowledge about the program.

Best
Massimiliano Gubinelli

On 2. Apr 2019, at 20:08, Giovanni Piredda <address@hidden>
wrote:

I do not know the details on how to do all of these things (I
figured out how to add files to the main document, see below), but
they are nice questions for the StackExchange :-)

In my opinion there is enough interest to open a StackExchange
section, maybe one of the developers should open it, to make it
official. But if they wish, one of the users can do it as well.

For your question:

you have to set the main document to be "master"

- In the menus: Tools -> Project -> Use as master

Then you attach your document to the master using "Attach master" in
the same Tools-> Project menu

(I am guessing the names of the menus as I have the German menus
:-))

I have just a little bit of experience with this (I did a document
with two subdocuments of a few pages each) so I do not know how well
it works with large documents.

Giovanni

Am 02.04.2019 um 19:44 schrieb address@hidden:

I would like a get a simple tutorial how to write a book (few pages
just for example)

how to add files in the main book

I have a lot of examples and I don't know how to include them inside
each other.

Any guidance ?

Henri

Le 02/04/2019 à 17:48, Youjun Hu a écrit :

Hi all,

I also support using more social-network styles to build TeXmacs
community, which now seems to be small and silent in most time.

TeXmacs is an excellent program and should be more visible.

Here is a mindmap for using TeXmacs which I found useful and would
like to share:

https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/texmacs-b207992c90c046bdbe4053cbdf88b5d5
[1]

As a 12-years TeXmacs user, I though I have used TeXmacs in the most
efficient way that TeXmacs can provide, but it turns out that there
are still some more efficient ways that Texmacs provides. As an
example, recently I found Ctrl-Backspace can delete the environment
near the cursor, which is very handy, e.g., for restoring a
colored/italic/bold font to default.

Youjun Hu

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 12:27 PM Nicola Mingotti
<address@hidden> wrote:

I fully support StackExchange.
It would be easier to find recurrent question/answer.

bye
n.

On 3/31/19 4:47 AM, Alkis Akritas wrote:
Great idea!

Alkis

Sent from my iPad

On 31 Mar 2019, at 13:37, Alvaro Tejero Cantero <address@hidden>
wrote:

I also support it and will contribute.

A good starting point would be for us to fish recurring questions
from the mailing list and answering them there.

Lets do it!

Álvaro.

On Sun, 31 Mar 2019 at 12:29, Basile Audoly <address@hidden>
wrote:

Dear Giovanni,
using stackexchange is a great idea. I am in.

Basile

Le 28 mars 2019 à 21:23, Giovanni Piredda <address@hidden> a
écrit :

Dear Max,

the idea of a stackexchange section, I think, is good, and I am
willing to participate into starting it (it may have drawbacks, but
it is something practical that can help, and I think this outweighs
the drawbacks). I have looked at the FAQ
(https://area51.stackexchange.com/faq [2]) and it looks doable - it
would be important to hear from other users and the other
developers, as it will require for a while consistent participation
(then it may go on by itself).

I have at least another comment on the topic "stackexchange section"
but I would like to hear other opinions first.

Giovanni

Am 28.03.2019 um 15:33 schrieb Massimiliano Gubinelli:
Dear Giovanni,
the points you make below are quite sensible. Inclusion in major
Linux distribution is blocked by the current impossibility to switch
to Guile 2, this require nontrivial developer work which so far has
not been undertaken. Some low level parts of TeXmacs scheme code
have to be rewritten and we would very much appreciate help from
people versed in Guile 2.

For the rest I think that a better and more user friendly way to
share knowledge about TeXmacs would be to have our own stackexchange
section. In my experience this is the place where I find very useful
and up to date LaTeX informations (how to do something, which are
the packages more appropriate to some task, etc…).

It would allow to create a shared knowledgebase which is better
structured and more reliable than digging the mail archives (IMHO)

Max

On 26. Mar 2019, at 22:08, Giovanni Piredda <address@hidden>
wrote:

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 :-)



Links:
------
[1] https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/texmacs-b207992c90c046bdbe4053cbdf88b5d5
[2] https://area51.stackexchange.com/faq
[3]
https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/121978/texmacs?referrer=kx6OG2kzsntvCBnp7y8WZQ2

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