texmacs-dev
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[Texmacs-dev] Re: Compiling TexMacs on OSX


From: m . gubinelli
Subject: [Texmacs-dev] Re: Compiling TexMacs on OSX
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:37:13 +0200

Dear Abdelrazak,

On 13 juin 08, at 11:53, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

address@hidden wrote:

Ok ... how can I help to improve the mac port?

the port is in a very early stage. My first goal has been to implement roughly the basic stuff, also to get acquainted with the source code. Joris has made a very nice work in separating the different layers of the GUI and it has been not so difficult to make TeXmacs run natively under cocoa.

Hello,

Sorry in advance for my interruption in this list. I am a core developer of LyX and I would like to share my experience with you. Please, take it this way or simply ignore me if this advice sounds inappropriate.
[......]
So, IMNSHO, you should concentrate on one cross-platform graphical toolkit. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good idea to separate the core code from the GUI code but wasting energy on multiple frontends is not. Of course, everybody is free to do what he/she wants but, if you want Texmacs to evolve, that's not the right way IMO. There are a number of cross-platform toolkits available, you should just pick one (Qt, Gtk, Java, etc). I can assure you that the user won't see the difference between a Cocoa app and a Qt/Mac app, really.

Side note: I don't see Texmacs as a competitor for LyX, they just fill different niches. And I am not interested in competition anyway :-) Actually I think there is a lot of room for collaboration between the two projects.

Sorry again if my post seems arrogant, that was not the intention, I just couldn't resist to share my LyX experience with you :-)

I fully understand your concerns about "resource management". I will express my point of view on this particular situation, I think this does not necessarily reflect the point of view of Joris (the main developer) or of other people of the project (which I do not know personally). I work on this port because I want a scientific writing platform on Mac to work on. In my opinion it is not really true that e.g. a Qt/Mac application looks like a Mac app, for the same reason that NeoOffice does not look like a mac app or that MS Word does not look like a mac app. Prototypical Mac apps are Mail, iPhoto, iMovie and they have not so many buttons and an enterely different concept of GUI that the one allowed by "universal" toolkits. TeXmacs is perfect under X, but the point is that I do not like its interface, I wanted a software with a simpler interface and which can take advantage of the Mac OS. From the point of view of the user what is the rationale to buy an OS just to be able to run the same apps which run under Linux? So I take literally the idea of "free software" and I want to adapt this incredible piece of software to my workplace (and this workplace is, in this moment, a Mac). The first step is to take the original interface under Cocoa, next some changes in the UI will come. It's a personal endeavour which I share with the community. There were no official plans for this port: only my interest has started it, and Joris sometimes is worried about the possibility that the port will die once I will shift to other interests. I cannot exclude this.

I had time to spend. I wasn't interested in improving TeXmacs under Linux. I'm working to port TeXmacs under Cocoa with the aim to make it a simple and productive piece of software to use for my own work. As a by-product I'm learning a lot about typesetting, interactive editors and last and least: C++.

I think Henry Lesourd is working on the Qt (or Gtk, I dont remember) port of TeXmacs. In this early stage is interesting to have people working on ports just to devise ways of overcome problems most of which are of the same nature, irrespective of the target platform, and find solutions (which againt could be easy to adapt to other targets, since most of the APIs are similar).

As a programmer I do not consider myself as a "resource" of the TeXmacs project. Inversely I consider this "free software" as a resource to exploit to take pleasure in programming and build a tool which I will like to work with. (and if I cannot manage to reach this goal I will continue to write math using TeX....)

Best,
Massimiliano Gubinelli


ps: given the existence of the GNUStep project and the Cocotron project [http://www.cocotron.org] you can consider that also Cocoa/ OpenStep is a cross-platform library (at least in its core functionality). but this is not the point.










reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]