Re: [Texmacs-dev] conference/journal TeXmacs style files

[Henri Lesourd]

These comments are my own opinion, they are not
necessarily the only way to see the problem ;-).

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Amir Michail wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if there is some incentive for conferences/journals to
> accept TeXmacs submissions.
>
>  
In my opinion, there are few incentives for journals, whether
or not the technology is better or not than LaTeX. For them,
accepting a new technology means changing all their factory-like
processing which goes from the original TeX file to the offset
printable file : from their point of view, this only brings
potential problems, and zero benefits. I mean : the benefits
of the more convenient editing, etc., are felt by the *authors*,
not by the publisher, and this could very well be a quite good
definition of the problem we face, by the way.

As a consequence, only a strong grassroots movement stemming
from the authors could convince publishers, a little bit
like all journals in fields outside of mathematics and
physics accept MS-Word file format : for them, this is
a promise of future problems, because the format is closed,
and it will perhaps not very well be supported in future
versions of Word in 15 years from now, etc. But they accept
papers in this format, just because they know that most of
authors would be unable and/or strongly unwilling to accept
using something else than MS-Word.


> Why should they go through the effort of creating TeXmacs style files?
>
>  
This is the job of TeXmacs's users (I mean : I would like
that it would be otherwise, but I see that currently, nobody
else has a real incentive to do it).

By the way, if you can do it, you don't need that the
publishers accept TeXmacs file format : you can send
them LaTeX files.

The existence of those style files would also enable
collaboration between people using TeXmacs and people
using LaTeX. This is also currently one of the important
problems : in a team of people writing a paper, as soon
as one is using LaTeX, if you don't have a TeXmacs implementation
of the style file, the only solution is that all the people
use LaTeX (or all the people use TeXmacs and hack the LaTeX
output afterwards, but in any case, guess what is the usual
group decision in groups where usually, everybody knows LaTeX,
and only some people know TeXmacs ?).


> It seems that it might be necessary for TeXmacs developers/users to
> create TeXmacs style files for many conferences/journals to encourage
> them to accept TeXmacs submissions.
>
>  
Yep.


> But even then, the results would need to be indistinguishable from
> what you get from their LaTeX/TeX style files.
>
> Are there settings for TeXmacs for which the output is
> indistinguishable from TeX/LaTeX?
>
>  
Make the results indistinguishable from purely LaTeX-inputted
files is a small (technical) problem compared to the huge need
of having stylesheets for the hundreds of journals/conferences
currently in existence...


> Can anyone guess what work it would mean to produce TeXmacs styles that
> export LaTeX for specific LaTeX styles?
>
>  
It would mean that we need one author/maintainer for each
one of the hundreds of stylesheets for each journal/conference.

For this purpose, perhaps a small document describing
the variables in TeX/LaTeX vs. the equivalent (but
very different) variable set in TeXmacs would be
very useful (because the root of the problem is
precisely that no automatic translation seems easily
possible in this area).

Some propaganda directed to the conference organizers,
in order to convince them to allow TeXmacs input (and
provide by themselves the TeXmacs style file) would
also be relevant (although less mandatory than having
a sufficient library of styles beforehand).


> I think TeXmacs needs a killer feature that goes well beyond what TeX
> can do.  Perhaps then major publishers will accept TeXmacs
> submissions.  Ideally, this killer feature would make the publisher's
> job easier in some way.
>
Unfortunately, it seems that what makes the publisher's
job easier is not a better technology : it is a robust
computerized printing line. In this respect, any change,
even if it is an improvement for other people (e.g., for
the authors), is a risk and/or a cost for them, not a benefit.


> As an example, perhaps TeXmacs could make the job of reviewers easier
> in some way by allowing annotation, collaboration, ranking, etc. in
> the review process.
>
Yes, it would be interesting, but the reviewers are not
the publishers, unfortunately.

I would rather believe that the more indirect way could
be the most successful, in the end : namely, at some point,
in the future, if a critical mass of people is using TeXmacs,
the publishers will have to follow them.