mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Massimiliano Gubinelli <address@hidden>]

Dear Amir,

> On 5. Jun 2019, at 20:43, Amir Michail <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> In LyX, you can easily change between many sorts of environments such as 
> between itemize and subsection.
> 
> TeXmacs seems to require creating a new environment and manually moving 
> content from the old environment into the new environment.
> 

This is not strictly true, TeXmacs can ‘cycle' among similar environments, 
e.g. section, subsection, … or theorem, proposition, lemma,… or itemize, 
enumerate,…

It is true that currently there is no option to cycle, e.g. between theorem 
and itemize, but I should say I never felt the need of this myself.

Maybe it would be useful to describe some usecases which illustrate exaclty 
which functionalities one would like to add.

In principle TeXmacs can support any automated modification of the document, 
actually you can program it yourself because it is among the things one can 
customize via scheme without resorting to modify the code of TeXmacs.

However I think to implement what you suggest, i.e. a shift from section to 
itemize for example, would be nontrivial since sections apriori (in TeXmacs 
and in LaTeX) are not proper environment so it is not syntactically clear 
where they end. 

Can you give me an example on how LyX operate to convert section into 
itemize? What is the extent of text which ends up in the itemize environment? 
Sorry but I do not have it installed right now.


> Also, in LyX, you can easily change the nesting level of items in a list 
> using tab and shift tab.

This does not seem complicated, but again one would first try to think if it 
is a useful and consistent feature and how exactly it should operate. I do 
not think blind imitation of LyX is what we have in mind for TeXmacs. 

> 
> Doing the same in TeXmacs is more involved and you need to think about 
> creating/deleting environments and manually moving content.
> 

Some example of the kind of editing flows involved would be appreciated. 
Again I see your point but I didn’t recall to had this needs and so I cannot 
figure out what is the most common use case.

> I understand that TeXmacs is a structured editor, but I don’t think this 
> precludes it from making it more convenient for the user to change the 
> structure of the document in common ways.

In any way. I agree with you.

Best
Max


> 
> Amir
>