[Texmacs-dev] Re: small but useful Suggestions for TeXmacs (fwd)

[Joris van der Hoeven]

Sorry for possible duplicates; I made a mistake.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 19:30:10 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>
To: Barross <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: small but useful Suggestions for TeXmacs

Hi,

> i'd like to write you because I want to help making TeXmacs better and even  
> faster to use. I also like to mention that TeXmacs _is_ already a very good 
> and usable programm. Thanks for this software!

Thanks for your detailed email.
I forwarded it to our developers mailing list and
will rapidly try to answer some of your points.

> I.
> I read the suggestions on the texmacs-page and I also think that a toolbar or 
> table with self-createable formula-templates would be a great idea, because 
> there are often parts of formulas and terms in a document that are used 
> frequently.
> It would be nice to drag them in the document, but even better to give them 
> an 
> easy shortcut (like for example esc+1, esc+2 and so on), so one can quickly 
> insert them.

I think that this is already somewhere on our wish-list:

http://alqua.com/tmresources/wish%20list

David?

> II.
> Furthermore I like to suggest that to extent every menu-point with its 
> associated keybord-shortcut-string (if there is one), like it is already in 
> some cases. That would make learning shortcuts easier and also easier to look 
> up. This counts also for the context-menus.

Yes, this is on our wish list too;
in fact I plan to automize this process soon.

> III.
> In my opinion it's very good and important to get visual feedback on 
> environment information, but I think it should be improved. I suggest to make 
> it viewable/hidable through a menu-switch, but then more visible (thicker 
> color-distinguished outlines or filled boxes, and also every environment 
> outlined not only the active one, so one can see the structure of the whole 
> document).

You are right ; we want to make this more configurable
through the new "Preferences" menu.

> IV.
> I am often puzzled, because integrals don't behave like summations. I suggest 
> that limits in formula-mode are positioned right next to the symbol while in 
> equation-mode (where's more space) the limits should be under and over the 
> symbol.

You have variants of the integration symbols (E-E-L I, E-E-L O).
The keyboard shortcuts may change soon though.

> V.
> There is no option to make vectors distinguished as bold letters. I often see 
> that in many LateX-scipts. It would be nice to have that with TeXmacs too.
> Perhaps it's possible to make an option how vectors should be rendered. 
> Either 
> with the vector-arrow, as a bold letter or underlined.

This is a good idea for a new macro, although I have to think a bit about it.
David: can you put this on the wish-list?

> VI.
> I'd like to be able to use a LaTeX-command like this:
> \sum_n=1^N
> or
> \int_a^b

Well, TeXmacs is not exactly LaTeX; you should get used to typing
it in the TeXmacs way...

> Thank you for your time to read this I am sure you have else to do!
> I am not a programmer, but if you need a german translator for something like 
> that, I'd like to help.

Thank you for your proposal; we do already have some people for
translating the menu entries. However, it would be nice if some
of the most important documentation pages could be translated
into German. We are currently reorganizing the documentation system.
When we are done (in about a few months), would you be willing to
help with this?

Thanks for your reaction, Joris


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Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>
http://www.texmacs.org: GNU TeXmacs scientific text editor
http://www.math.u-psud.fr/~vdhoeven: personal homepage
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