mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Giovanni Piredda <address@hidden>]

Your arguments are fair. Let us work on the blog and let us see it develop.

A section on misconceptions could also be ok.

I would also like to hear your opinion on putting an accent on 
user-developed extensions (including making it easier for other users to 
find them by providing a collection of articles which link to 
repositories, and encouraging authors to submit them). It seems to me 
that the extensibility of TeXmacs should be used more; moreover, it 
automatically sets a distance ("plugin", "extension") between the core 
software and the extensions, so that hosting an article about an 
extension does not mean endorsing the extension, which remains under the 
responsibility of its author.

For example it would be very nice if someone would write an extension 
for chemistry, or to give more ways to input colors (what I have found 
so far is named colors and html codes: are there any others?). These 
quite complex things could happen more easily if there is a "base" of 
simpler extensions written by users.

G.

On 11.11.20 14:12, Massimiliano Gubinelli wrote:
> Giovanni,
>   well, developers here means me (:)). Again, I'm open to discussion but personally I 
> do not think that a wiki in the style of wikipedia will work (it is questionable also 
> if it works for wikipedia). In the scientific community the accepted way of 
> communicating is via "curated" journals after peer-review, and it also seems 
> appropriate to me here.
>
> There should be someone (the editors) who put her/his "face" in guaranteeing 
> that the material is interesting and useful. That is the only reason somebody would 
> like to spend time reading it.
>
> If you have ever read places like stack-exchange you would realise that 
> sometimes the users suggest to other users wrong methods to solve problems 
> and if there is no more knowledgeable people around then these errors sticks 
> and are propagated around.
>
> Also the "editors" help the contributors to focus their material and make it 
> accessible. TeXmacs is still a small project and I do not think there will be problems in 
> filtering the contributions. I see the development of the blog as the development of a piece of 
> code, you do not want to develop code in a "wiki" style.
>
> What happens to me often is that a new user want feature X implemented, 
> because it exists in software Y, Z or W, without taking time to appreciate 
> the internal logic of TeXmacs or the design tradeoffs and motivations. 
> Sometimes users think that something can be done in some way, but they do not 
> see that there is an easier way.
>
> Moderation help to remove common misconception. It would also be useful to have a page 
> on that: "Common misconceptions of newly arrived users" :)
>
>
> But again, I think the forum and the mailing list are the right place for 
> discussions. The blog is for mature content which should not be difficult to 
> moderate efficiently and favour contributions as much as possible.
>
> Max
>
>
>
> > On 11. Nov 2020, at 13:56, Giovanni Piredda <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > If a curated blog is the one developers see most fit, then I am going to 
> > support it even if my initial preference was for a wiki mostly controlled by 
> > the users.
> >
> > Still I think that support for exchange of packages and style files among 
> > users would be good (strong benefits could come from this). The blog can do 
> > it by publishing articles where users describe their own extensions, with a 
> > link to a repository, and organizing these articles into collections.
> >
> > G.
> >
> >
> > Am 11.11.2020 um 09:38 schrieb Massimiliano Gubinelli:
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > >   I've added some guidelines for proposing content for the blog 
> > > (https://texmacs.github.io/notes/index.html).
> > >
> > > You can find them 
> > > here:https://texmacs.github.io/notes/editorial-guidelines.html
> > >
> > > I tend to think that the correct contribution system is a "curated" one for 
> > > many reasons:
> > >
> > > 1) technical: the addition have to be post-processes by knowledgeable people 
> > > to ensure that the HTML translation is acceptable and nice.
> > >
> > > 2) editorial: we want this place to be useful and meaningful. To me the right approach 
> > > is to consider it a "publication" where there is somebody (an editor board) 
> > > which cares about homogeneity and quality. So a bit of centralization. This agrees with 
> > > the fact that TeXmacs itself (i.e. Joris :)) is very opinionated on design choices and 
> > > aim.
> > >
> > > 3) decentralization: the fact that is a git repository means that it still 
> > > remains de-centralized to a large extent: if you want you can clone the 
> > > repository and publish the material in **any way** you like. Like software 
> > > this material will be open source, for all to use as they see fit.
> > >
> > >
> > > I feel that the editorial policy do not restrict your freedom as content contributor: 
> > > if you have a github account is very easy to publish your own better version as 
> > > "github pages".
> > >
> > > Anyway I'm open to discuss it, my intention is that it is 
> > > useful/informative/correct/pleasant to read, this should be the primary goal.
> > >
> > > Max