Re: [Texmacs-dev] Creating styles

[David Allouche]

On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 12:24:10PM -0600, Nix N. Nix wrote:
> Is there a simple way to create new styles, or to override existing ones
> ?  I have tried looking at the various .ts files, but the syntax seems
> prohibitive.  Is there an example stylesheet somewhere, that shows me
> how to override, say, a numbered style, such as a section header ?  That
> is, suppose I want my sections to be numbered using roman numerals and
> their title written using italicized text.  How would I go about saying
> that in the preamble ?

Short of a really helpful answer (which would take quite a lot of time
to figure out), the basic answer is:

  Do not edit .ts file using vi or emacs, but use TeXmacs. The
  preamble mode is not really nice, but you will avoid many file format
  related pitfalls.

  About example stylesheets, well... not much out of the distribution.

  Generally, the core stylesheets use a heavily modularized (and
  almost undocumented) organization. The best way to do what you
  request would probably be to figure out how the whole mess work and
  copy-paste the inner structure which can do what you want to a
  personal package and then hack around.

  Create an example document which use your package and edit the
  package in the same texmacs process. When you save your package,
  your document will be automagically updated. Nice feature for
  incremental development.

  Beware of the std--before.ts and std--after.ts packages which are
  evaluated at the start and at the end of the creation of the initial
  environment. One thinng std--after.ts does is created theorem-like
  enviroments, that is why you must define them in a package and not
  in the document itself.

  Any contribution to improve the modularity and customuzability of
  the standard styles is welcome. Well, I do not have Joris word for
  it, but my opinion is that things are not flexible enough yet. One
  or two years from now, DRD might make us all happy, but in the
  meantime things can be improved in the current framework.


> I know this is sort of off-topic, but I don't think I can ask anywhere
> else.

Not at all off-topic, since the reply is just another variant of "read
the code" and "patches welcome" :)

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa