Re: [Texmacs-dev] major barrier to adoption

[Henri Lesourd]

Amir Michail wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The problem with this proposal is that it is too complicated.  People
> just want something that works without restrictions -- especially hard
> to understand ones.
>
>  
Too bad.

The problem with supporting LaTeX is exactly the same : it
is too complicated, and worse than everything else, it would
constrain very much the possible directions for developing
TeXmacs (in itself, the size of the code we would have to
maintain would already be a huge constraint).

Thus striving for a 100% LaTeX compatibility seems *not at
all* to be a sensible approach. This is why the way of an
approximative compatibility has been chosen instead : it
allows us to develop a modern system, while retaining a
quite good communication with LaTeX.


What will be more important in 200 years from now ?

Having invested all our energies for mimicking LaTeX,
or having built a better editor, which will perhaps
be *the* one from which future systems will draw
their inspiration (or even, be the very design
which will survive in the end ;-) ?