Re: [Texmacs-dev] major barrier to adoption

[Henri Lesourd]

Amir Michail wrote:

> Hi,
>
> More from Scott:
>
> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=303#comment-16587
>
> He thinks the UI is poor.
>
>  
He's right. But right now precisely, we are revamping
the GUI completely  (it's being ported to Qt, as a
starting point ; other ports are expected to become
much easier once this initial port will have been
completed).


As far as his other arguments are concerned :

1. The interface sucks. OK, Cf. answer above ;

2. Doesn't do a great job of importing my
  existing TeX files.

  The LaTeX import could be improved, but it's
  already quite good. And as far as importing
  LaTeX styles, we *do not* do it ;

3. The fact that it [TeXmacs] doesn't support TeX as
  a native language would make it all but impossible
  to coauthor papers in a TeX-based world.


  This is simply false.

  There is quite a bunch of people who are
  using TeXmacs for collectively authoring
  LaTeX papers. How do they do it ?

  -> they use TeXmacs's LaTeX import/export
     for their documents. This way, they use
     TeXmacs but are still authoring LaTeX
     documents ;

  -> they re-implemented the LaTeX style
     files they need inside TeXmacs,
     by means of the TeXmacs style
     sheet language.


  Moreover, hailing TeX as the St Graal of
  stylesheet languages, and criticizing TeXmacs
  for not supporting it reveals a lack of
  understanding of why TeX's design is in
  fact *extremely poor* : we don't live in
  the XXth century anymore !

  The TeXmacs stylesheet language is a modern,
  almost completely functional language, which
  has been designed from scratch to be small,
  efficient, and well tailored to its purpose.

  Not supporting TeX inside TeXmacs is thus
  a design choice, not an infortunate lack
  due to the incompetence of the programmers
  of TeXmacs.

  There are lots of things that could be
  appropriately criticized in TeXmacs, but
  certainly not the non support of TeX, IMHO.


Best, Henri