mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Pierre-Henri Jondot <address@hidden>]

Hi,

I am now spending quite a bit of time using TeXmacs as I do have to write 
from scratch all lessons, exercises for a new year with what is a brand new 
level of teaching for me. There is no better time to say goodbye to latex 
(for which I had no real complain) as TeXmacs is just a much better 
experience, and I don't have to rely on a lot of already written documents.

The tremendously efficient copy and paste, the matrix editing just to name a 
few advantages over LaTeX writing makes writing tons of exercises a joy. When 
I consider myself sufficiently trained, I'll try to encourage as many 
colleagues to use TeXmacs as I can, maybe by inviting them to some kind of an 
informal workshop.

Regarding keyboard mapping and shortcuts :
I try to make my keyboard the most efficient as possible to reduce the risk 
of repetitive strain injuries as I am prone to them. TeXmacs defines by 
default quite a lot of them and is by default quite helpful already but of 
course there are still quite a lot of functions I use a lot and for which I'd 
like to configure keyboard shortcuts.

For matrices, the shortcuts C-arrows to add new lines and columns is 
absolutely needed, but by default it conflicts with macos already defined 
shortcuts ( it changes spaces). I tried emacs style keymapping in TeXmacs, 
but it didn't help much as I lost the ability to enter a large centered math 
equation. Indeed, option+$ on a french layout gives the euro € char.

It might be there is an easy way to adjust standard keyboard shortcuts, but 
to be honest, I've not been able to find it yet. I had some hope with the 
Tools->Keyboard->Edit shortcuts (something like that I suppose in English) 
but I couldn't find how one uses that...

I went the easy way for the time being, disabling macos shortcuts, and 
staying with Mac OS style for keyboard shortcuts within TeXmacs.

Then I configured a few shortcuts by adding to my-init-texmacs.scm : 

(kbd-map
   ("t t t" (make 'theorem))
   ("f f f" (make 'folded-env))
   ("p p p" (make 'proposition))
   ("e e e" (make 'exercise))
   ("s s s" (make 'solution*))
)

It works... somewhat, but is most probably not the right way to do it... 
especially as regards the folded-env... It works like this : I hit three 
times f, then enter, then I add my theorem or exercise, then I unfold and add 
the solution or demonstration (for which I'll need another shortcut of 
course, but I'm not there yet...)

That was not what I had in mind. I wanted to use the capslock which I 
redefined, with the help of Karabiner, to serve as a shift+control+option 
modifier (which I then use in karabiner to have quicker access to \ [ ] { } 
which are a bit of a pain on a macos keyboard...), so I would have liked that 
hitting capslock-f (which translates to shift+control+command-f) to begin a 
folded environment. Instead I hit thrice f for the time being, which is quite 
usable, but I'd be curious to know what I would have needed to write for it 
to work. I tried quite a few things, but I was not successful.

As it is already quite a long message, I'll try to post other remarks and 
questions (regarding formula editing) in a different post.

Regards,

Pierre-Henri