TeXmacs NextStep backend

[Massimiliano Gubinelli]

Dear GNUstep developers,

[I've already posted a similar message two years ago but in the meantime I saw that various useful part of Gnustep (like Renaissance) are being developed more, so I hope in more luck and feedback this time.] 

TeXmacs (www.texmacs.org) is a scientific editing platform with high-quality typesetting capabilities. Principal features are: structured wysiwyg editing, interface with many scientific/graphical softwares (like Maxima, Octave, R, gnuplot, Python), guile scripting. The codebase is a mix of C++ and scheme (Guile). TeXmacs *does not* depends on TeX in any way.

The original program had only a X11 backend totally independent of any widget toolkit. We are developing a Qt backend which started as a port of a partial Cocoa backend I wrote in 2007. The Cocoa backend is at the moment woefully incomplete but partially working.

Right now the Qt backend is complete and we essentially switched to it  as a main backend, leaving the old-fashioned pure-X11 backend. This allows us to deliver a cross-platform application which will work on Mac, Windows and X11. Note however the the X11 backend is stilll working and that the application architecture is modular enough to support various backends without trouble. In particular I do not expect major changes to be needed to accommodate the Cocoa backend.

Due to the small number of developers involved (only 2 in stable form) we were obliged to concentrate in one backend and we choose Qt since it offered us the possibility to deliver native GUIs on all the majort platforms.

I would really like to revive the Cocoa/NS backend and wonder if someone here is interested in helping in its development.  It is a quite affordable project for someone versed in Cocoa/GNUstep and interested in open-source scientific software to improve the port so that it can match in quality the Qt backend. Since the Qt backend is well advanced the initial part of the project it is only matter of translating Qt structures and operations on the equivalent Cocoa ones (at the moment the Qt backend is 17000 loc).

* You can find some recent screenshots of the Qt gui here (scroll at the bottom)

http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html

* If you want to peek at the code we have a svn repository at savannah

http://svn.sv.gnu.org/viewvc/trunk/src/?root=texmacs

and a git mirror at gitorious

http://gitorious.org/texmacs

* The Cocoa/NS backend directory is trunk/src/src/Plugins/Cocoa
* The Qt backend is in trunk/src/src/Plugins/Qt

I think it would be a very strong addition to the set of GNUstep applications.

Best regards,

Massimiliano Gubinelli