Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: texmacs installation problem

[David Allouche]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 06:06:43PM +0100, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:

> > I see gnu.org[1] has an CVS accessible[2] version of the website
> > (though it is very old).
> > 
> >    [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/texmacs/
> >    [2] 
> > http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs//software/texmacs/?cvsroot=www.gnu.org
> > 
> > Why not move the maintenance of the website to Savannah? There are
> > many things I would like to fix on it, and we could also use it
> > directly as a repository for user contributions.
> 
> In fact, I would like the future website to be written with TeXmacs.
> Indeed, I want to work towards a situation where all documents
> other than programs are written in TeXmacs and converted to other
> formats when necessary. Notice that, a priori, TeXmacs can perfectly
> be used as an editor of dynamic web pages. It suffices to add a little
> bit of specialized markup and implement the necessary conversion tools.
> 
> So if you want to contribute to the future website for TeXmacs,
> then this can actually be done already using our online documentation
> system; it suffices to put it in a special directory "web".
> However, we should first discuss a new structure for the site.
> Pablo had some ideas on that and so do I.

So, if a understand well, the conversion tools are not there yet and
we cannot even start writing "web" documents on the CVS until some
unspecified point in the future when you have decided for a new
structure for the site.

Generating the website using TeXmacs is a great idea, and I fully
support it, but I was talking of short term changes.


> Also, the priority is not the website, but rather version 1.0.1.
> You promised me several things for that version, so it would be nice
> if you could finish that first. After that, we will have a discussion
> about the website.

Well... you were the one first asked me to work on the website. But I
agree that my time would be probably better spent working for the
1.0.1 release.

Could you use Savannah's task manager to write out your expectations?
So there would be no disagreement about what I should do. Other meta
informations (priority, dates, estimated amount of work) could also be
very helpful.


> > And we could probably arrange domain name transfer with
> > the admins at gnu.org.
> 
> We'll see; I just paid for two more years for the current IP.
> Also, it is out of question to change the rules of the game,
> as long as we do not have any tools for usuage statistics on Savannah.
> In any case, all this is not urgent, so I prefer to slowly move on.

I do not really care what is IP of the server. My point was just that
I have no motivation to work on www.texmacs.org in its current status.

And since things are not to change in the short term, the issue is
closed. I will update my website, and you will take the changes if you
like them.


> What you can do though is improve the Html output filter and
> make it really great. This is something which is in the Macaulay 2
> contract anyway and an important part of the proposed scheme for
> improving the website.

I do not see how that is in the Macaulay2 contract. The contract is
entirely about *input* filters.

Anyway, that is something I have in mind, at least for my personal
use. I am currently working on an experimental system to produce
changelog pages using TeXmacs, so I can get familiar with these
conversion problems.

Note however that progress is quite slow right now since I spend a lot
of time designing tools to improve my productivity in the long run, so
maintaining the changelogs and the patch lists will not take too much
of my time. I also plan to release these tools soon.

Once that is complete, I will go on with the menu work. I already have
done substantial cleanup of the menu.scm code. (btw, you were right,
the list->alist hack produces unreadable code).

-- 
David Allouche         | GNU TeXmacs -- Writing is a pleasure
Free software engineer |    http://www.texmacs.org
   http://ddaa.net     |    http://alqua.com/tmresources
   address@hidden  |    address@hidden
TeXmacs is NOT a LaTeX front-end and is unrelated to emacs.