mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[TeXmacs <address@hidden>]

On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 07:20:52PM +0700, Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2021, Basile Audoly wrote:
> >Your question is right on spot. The developers are aware that offering 
> >something similar to the amsmath environment is
> >desirable. We discussed this a few weeks ago in one of the mailing lists.
> >
> >I am personally (over)using tables in equations, which are really powerful 
> >in TeXmacs. The problem is that they look ugly
> >when exported to LaTeX.
> In LaTeX I always use align (sometimes split inside equation), and
> never use eqnarray. It would be very good to hove something like
> align in TeXmacs.

It more and more seems to me that we have to distinguish between two points
in this discussion: (1) the best way to deal with long equations and
alignment of several equations inside TeXmacs; and (2) the way things should
be exported to LaTeX.

Basile is right that, visually at least, tables are sufficiently powerful
to do more or less what we need; but they are not entirely exported to LaTeX
in the way one might wish.  Semantically speaking, we might also prefer
some markup distinction between a long equation that is broken while
maintaining a certain type of alignment, and a list of equations that are
aligned in a particular way.  I.e. the editor should know over which cells
the actual formulas run.

About eqnarray*, which indeed has bad press in the TeX/LaTeX world.
This environment is indeed extremely limited and the spacing rules
are different from this used by several other environments.
One nice thing that I do like about it though is precisely
the larger spacing around the relation symbols in the middle column.
This is probably an unintentional artifact though and it would
be cleaner to have a "wide spacing" option that would systematically
use this kind of spacing around relation symbols.

Best wishes, --Joris