Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: Contribution...

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Gwenael Gabard wrote:

>    Hi,
> 
> > > I tried to implement align and align* math environments in
> > > env-math.ts. Is it the right place to define these environments ?
> > Yes, it definitely is; writing style files is still a bit clumsy,
> > especially for tabular environments, so do not hestitate to ask us for
> > help.
> For the eqnarray* environment:
>   <assign|eqnarray*|<macro|body|<with|paragraph mode|center|mode|math|formula
>   style|true|interline space|0.45fn|<surround|<format|no page break
>   before><vspace*|0.5fn>|<vspace|0.5fn><format|no indentation
>   after>|<tformat|<twith|table hyphen|y>|<twith|table
>   width|1par>|<twith|table min cols|3>|<twith|table max
>   cols|3>|<cwith|1|-1|1|1|cell lsep|0spc>|<cwith|1|-1|-1|-1|cell
>   rsep|0spc>|<cwith|1|-1|1|-1|cell bsep|0sep>|<cwith|1|-1|1|-1|cell
>   tsep|0sep>|<cwith|1|-1|1|1|cell hpart|1>|<cwith|1|-1|-1|-1|cell
>   hpart|1>|<cwith|1|-1|1|1|cell halign|r>|<cwith|1|-1|1|1|cell
>   hyphen|b>|<cwith|1|-1|2|-2|cell halign|c>|<cwith|1|-1|-1|-1|cell
>   halign|l>|<cwith|1|-1|-1|-1|cell hyphen|t>|<arg|body>>>>>>
> in the 'tformat' command I don't understand precisely how the 'cwith' command 
> works. The 'cell halign|l' command is clear but the '|1|-1|-1|-1|' remains a 
> mystery.

Negative arguments mean that you count from the right hand side or bottom.
In the example, it means that the rightmost column is left aligned.

> > >    There is a weird thing in TeXmacs: in equations when two or more
> > > letters are entered TeXmacs automatically switch to roman fonts ! Is
> > > there any way to disable this behaviour ?
> > No, there is not, but we consider that it is a good behaviour.
> > Indeed, it forces you to specify the meaning of a formula;
> > a*b is not the same as f x.
>    From my point of view this is a problem for tensor notation: in the 
> expression A_{ijk} the index ijk should not be typed with a roman font.

We should have a special character to denote a white space for tensor
indices in that case. This would give the appropriate semantics.

> > Coming back to the converter issue: would you be interested in helping me
> > to write a cleaner converter? The plan is to rewrite fromtex.cc
> > in the Scheme extension language. This has already been done for totex.cc.
>
>    I can help for this task but I don't know much about the Scheme language...

Please take a look at

        progs/convert/tmtex.scm

in order to see how the current TeXmacs -> LaTeX output filter works.
Scheme is extremely flexible and uniform and not very hard to learn.
There is a good quick and quite complete guide by Tom Lord on

        http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/guile/guile_toc.html

I also found some documentation on

        http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/

> A good thing to do in parsetex.cc would be to delete all comments before 
> actually parsing the LaTeX file.

Yes, but what if they occur inside a verbatim environment?

> > Yet another thing: can you tell me which version of TeXmacs you used?
>    I worked with 1.0.0.9

Thanks.