Re: [Texmacs-dev] Path computations

[Joris van der Hoeven]

> So what  ? 'strong' is a user  macro, defined in some  TeXmacs package, while
> 'with' is a  TeXmacs *primitive*. In the first case,  the macro name position
> is taken  into account in  the computation. In  the second case, it  is *not*
> taken into account.
>
> 1) what are  the very reasons for such  a difference within the  two kinds of
> 'macros' ?

The reason is technical, but I agree that this is bad. In fact, one reason
of our migration to DRDs is to be able to consider macros as additional
primitives, in which case the distinction will disappear. I therefore
recommend to work on the scheme expressions for the moment (where the
distinction does not exist). If you also need to work with paths,
then, as a temporary solution, we might add a routine which converts
between the current paths and the planned paths.

> 2) If such a behavior must be  preserved, then I think a scheme function like
> 'primitive?', 'tm-primitive?' (...which ever  the name), returning the status
> for these names will be welcome to help developers.

That can indeed be added.

> I feel really bad with such a distinction, and TeXmacs crashed badly for many
> times  until I  figured out  that  the problem  was *that*  one. Moreover,  I
> remember defining a macro with name  'group' without knowing it was a TeXmacs
> primitive.  Of  course, several  documents  of  mime  behaved badly  in  this
> context! But  no warning  was given  for redefining a  primitive... And  as a
> matter of consequence, path computation  changed !  I can also imagine status
> changing from  a TeXmacs version  to another, so  the way of  computing paths
> seems too much context sensitive to me.
>
> How can we deal best with this issue?

Create a small and temporary wrapper which makes user macros behave
as primitives.