Re: [Texmacs-dev] graph editor

[TeXmacs]

Hi Max,

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 11:33:07AM +0200, Massimiliano Gubinelli wrote:
> Dear all,
>  in the forum there is a question about a more friendly interface to the plot 
> editor ("!" in the graph more). Currently one can define functions but only 
> in scheme syntax which is not very user-friendly.
> 
> We should devise a better interface. I'm not sure what plans Joris has for 
> this but it would be a nice project to create a dialog where functions can be 
> inserted via standard TeXmacs math commands. Since TeXmacs has already a 
> parser for math (used for semantic checking) maybe it would be possible to 
> extract a syntax tree (with correct precedence rules) and generate a 
> corresponding scheme function.
> 
> Joris, any idea/suggestions?

The question is whether TeXmacs would really be in its role here.
This could be considered to be the job of plug-ins.

> We still lack a generic mechanism to parse our mathematical formulas for 
> various uses. For example we could use it to generate MathML (I do not think 
> is already the case) or LaTeX, for what it is worth. 

This is only part of the subject.  It makes sense to have the parsing part
inside TeXmacs.  What to do with it, computationally speaking, is another 
matter.

In fact, we already _do_ have the parsing part; this is precisely what
std-symbols.scm and std-math.scm are about.  Another question is what
we could do with the parsed formulas.  We might generate content MathML
in addition to presentation MathML.  I don't understand why you mention LaTeX
in this context; it even does not support clean presentation markup.

Yet another issue concerns the semantics of symbols/formulas.
In different areas, the semantics may differ,
so not everybody will necessarily agree with our decisions.

Best wishes, --Joris