mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Amir Michail <address@hidden>]

On May 22, 2019, at 9:16 AM, Massimiliano Gubinelli <address@hidden> wrote:

I do not agree with you. The fact that is unfamiliar does not mean it is useless or irrelevant. Texmacs is a structured editor, and the focus box reflect this, if a user fail to understand the structure then you do not understand why TeXmacs behaves in the way it does. I think is dangerous going too in the direction of pleasing the user. This would produce a crap UI. The user has first to understand the principles, after that all TeXmacs operations are quite uniform and nicely designed, in my opinion.

I am convinced now that the focus box is a good way to learn how TeXmacs works.

As for advanced users who want something less distracting, maybe only show the focus when your cursor is at the start or end of an environment. 

If at the start, your cursor would look like “|_” and there would be a corresponding “_|” cursor at the end of the environment.  A similar thing would happen when you are at the end of an environment.

I think this would be less distracting than the focus box, especially if the other cursor color is not as noticeable as your actual cursor.

Amir

Maybe you could try to explain better your point of view, I’m not sure I get it completely.

I can understand that sometimes you want to hide the focus, maybe while doing a presentation, for example.

Indeed the focus is hidden when you are in full-screen mode.

Best

Max

On 22. May 2019, at 08:02, Amir Michail <address@hidden> wrote:

On May 22, 2019, at 1:52 AM, Basile Audoly <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Amir,

what is the point of getting of the focus box in a first place? To me, it is both non-invasive and incredibly informative. Without the focus box, it becomes quite difficult to understand TeXmacs' logics.

Basile

Focus is an unfamiliar concept to new users. Moreover, when writing, one would generally like to concentrate on the content rather than on the document structure.

Of course, revealing the document structure is at times important, but I don’t think you need to do that constantly.

Amir

Le 21 mai 2019 à 23:58, Amir Michail <address@hidden> a écrit :

Hello,

Why not have a simplified mode that does away with the focus almost entirely?

For example, maybe only show the focus box when the user is making a selection.

Moreover, instead of having focus operations and format operations, just have the latter. If the user wants to format an entire focus environment, then he/she can select it first (using the temporary focus boxes that appear during selection) and then use a format operation.

Amir