Re: [Texmacs-dev] major barrier to adoption

[Amir Michail]

Hi,

Why not focus on undergraduate students as a target audience?  They
don't have to use any LaTeX style files to do their coursework
assignments.

Moreover, when some of them go on to grad school, they will start
complaining that TeXmacs style files are not available for their
conferences/journals and things may change that way.

Amir


On 1/13/08, Henri Lesourd <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jeremy Henty wrote:
>
> >I certainly  don't want  to appear  to be  speaking on
> >behalf of  the TeXmacs  devs.
> >
> The point is : as far as I know (I am only *one*
> among many other contributors), TeXmacs devs are
> not really interested in displacing LaTeX anymore,
> because its a neverending job, and there are much
> more interesting things to develop with TeXmacs
> than trying to clone perfectly an old-fashioned
> system, even if it is LaTeX.
>
> At least for myself, this is 100% my approach
> to the LaTeX compatibility problem : forget
> it ! ;-), and I know this is somehow also
> the approach of other developers (but I'm
> not them, thus I cannot develop more precisely).
>
>
> >I believe  maths publishers  are often
> >quite  strict about  what macro  packages they  will accept,  so their
> >requirements could  be starting point for identifying  a useful "clean
> >LaTeX".
> >
> >
> >
> >
> By the way, that's the problem : publishers *enforce*
> the use of a given set of LaTeX style files. But they
> take null account of the cleanness of the implementation
> of their style files, nor do they provide access from
> other editing software.
>
> Would they simply accept PDF documents, for example,
> all the problems we discuss would not exist at all.
>
>
> Another approach which would solve the problem would
> be to implement a TeXmacs version of the style files
> for each journal.
>
> We know we could do this since a *very long time*,
> but given the lack of interest from the publishers,
> because from their point of view, moving is a cost,
> which brings no benefits (except the comfort of the
> authors : but they don't care, the "monopoly-like"
> position of LaTeX crushes the dissenting voices
> sufficiently efficiently), we need either :
>
> -> complaints from the authors to the publishers,
>    in such a way that these publishers are forced
>    to move ;
>
> -> contributions from the users, to reimplement
>    the styles of all the journals inside TeXmacs ;
>
>
> But given the fact that none of the two possibilities
> above has ever been really feasible in the past,
> we have to acknowledge that there is not a real
> interest in the community (at large) for improving
> the LaTeX toolchain.
>
> To me, it seems that whether we like it or not, this
> is somehow a fact. Thus, looking for other directions
> to develop TeXmacs is the sensible approach, it seems.
>
>
> Best, Henri
>
>
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