[Texmacs-dev] A practical solution to improved Latex output

[Christoph Gladisch]

Dear TexMacs Developers,

I have been using TexMacs for about 3 years and really appreciate your
work. The reasons why to prefer TexMacs over Latex are clear. However
sometime it is really required to use Latex, e.g., when (a) cooperating
with non-TexMacs users, or (b) because of the requirements by other
parties to deliver a finished document written in Latex.

My approach in these cases is to write a document using TexMacs, then
convert the document to Latex, and then to run my self-written tool
called TexMacs-Latex-2-Improved-Latex (TML2L) that improves the Latex
code according to my requirements. The requirements are to create more
readable Latex code and especially to use specific Latex-macros,
Latex-environments or even more complex Latex code from non-standard
packages. In case (a) this can be done only for the first version of the
document and in case (b) this process can be repeated until the document
is finished.  This tool is very simple and it  has no parser. It is
based on boundary search of opening and closing braces and performs
string replacements and therefore this is an extremely dirty approach
that causes frequently problems.

I would like to ask the TexMacs developers to implement a customized
Latex exporter directly in TexMacs. It should be possible to define for
*each* TM-macro if it should be expanded or otherwise *how* it should be
transformed into Latex-code. For the latter it would be sufficient to
define simple text patterns (Latex-code) with variables (that represent
the parameters of the TM-macro). This approach should not have the
restriction to translate a TM-macro to a Latex-macro and TM-environment
to Latex-environment. I belief that many users in computer science who
often must use Latex and Latex with specific packages would then have
the chance to use TexMacs for their work.

Best regards
Christoph Gladisch

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