Re: [Texmacs-dev] major barrier to adoption

[Amir Michail]

On Jan 11, 2008 4:37 PM, Karl Winterling <address@hidden> wrote:
> In my (rather limited, I admit) experience, most math people at my school
> (Berkeley) use LaTeX because one can easily download self-installing
> executables for LaTeX.  Although Macintoshes tend to enjoy more popularity,
> most (at least to my knowledge) students and professors don't seem all that
> interested in computers and don't want the trouble of setting up Fink.

Yes, this could be a factor:  math people are interested in math, not
computers.  They don't care about using the best tools -- they just
don't want to waste their time installing and learning anything new.

Amir


>
> I've also heard a lot of criticism directed at LaTeX (inconsistent syntax,
> unhelpful user manuals, bad interface for composition, etc).
>
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2008 11:01 AM, Henri Lesourd < address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > Amir Michail wrote:
> >
> > >And see point #1 here (provides evidence of peer pressure):
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > Yes, yes, there is peer pressure.
> >
> > But as I said, it's not a major barrier to adoption
> > of TeXmacs, it's a major barrier to adoption *as a
> > replacement for LaTeX*.
> >
> > But TeXmacs is very much used, and a big part
> > of its use (more than 50%, I would say) is on
> > its own, for the pure sake of writing documents,
> > not for generating LaTeX.
> >
> >
> > On the other hand, part of the criticism of
> > the guy is understandable, especially :
> >
> > a. There is no complete emulation of LaTeX
> >   inside TeXmacs (although nobody really
> >   has time to implement that : but for
> >   heavy LaTeX users, it is a problem) ;
> >
> > b. The TeXmacs markup is not very well
> >   editable in simple editors like emacs,
> >   it looks much more like XML.
> >
> >   Although... of course you can export
> >   your document to LaTeX, work on it
> >   in emacs, and reimport it later in
> >   TeXmacs, it works perfectly. But people
> >   are perhaps not sufficiently informed
> >   about this ;
> >
> > c. Remains the non-availability of the LaTeX
> >   styles problem, but this one will solve
> >   itself with time, I guess...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Texmacs-dev mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev
> >
>
>
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