Re: TeXmacs NextStep backend

[Massimiliano Gubinelli]

Hi,

On Mar 14, 2013, at 1:29 AM, Gregory Casamento <address@hidden> wrote:

Massimiliano,

It's worth noting that if your project uses XIB files, they should just work unmodified.   It may not be necessary to use Renaissance to start out with if you're simply exploring the possibility of a port.

GC

Nice feature, I didn't know it was possible. However TeXmacs cannot use XIB files since all the GUI elements are generated programmatically from the scheme code. TeXmacs is inspired by Emacs and all the features of the user interface can be reprogrammed on the fly without recompiling. For example menus and toolbars are described by scheme code and we are also developing a full set of widgets which can be used by the user to write his own plugins. An example is the following piece of code

(tm-widget (widget4)

  (centered

    (resize "200px" "50px"

      (scrollable

        (choice (display* answer "\n")

                '("First" "Second" "Third" "Fourth" "Fifth" "Sixth")

                "Third")))

    ======

    (resize "200px" "150px"

      (choices (display* answer "\n")

               '("First" "Second" "Third" "Fourth" "Fifth" "Sixth")

               '("Third" "Fifth")))))

which produces a widget with some fields. To implement this kind of logic we really need auto layout features. Qt has them and things work quite nicely there. I was a bit worried about having to reimplement all that for AppKit but now I found Renaissance and it seems really what I was looking for. Note that we do not aim to being able to produce full blown applications from scheme, just to have simple dialogs (like preferences panes or toolbars) which the users can reprogram at will without having to understand much of the underlying system and in quite natural ways.  

Massimilano

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Massimiliano Gubinelli <address@hidden> wrote:

Thanks

On Mar 13, 2013, at 10:34 PM, Fred Kiefer <address@hidden> wrote:

> On 12.03.2013 23:47, Massimiliano Gubinelli wrote:
>> Dear GNUstep developers,
>>
>> [I've already posted a similar message two years ago but in the meantime I saw that various useful part of Gnustep (like Renaissance) are being developed more, so I hope in more luck and feedback this time.]
>>
>> TeXmacs (www.texmacs.org) is a scientific editing platform with high-quality typesetting capabilities. Principal features are: structured wysiwyg editing, interface with many scientific/graphical softwares (like Maxima, Octave, R, gnuplot, Python), guile scripting. The codebase is a mix of C++ and scheme (Guile). TeXmacs *does not* depends on TeX in any way.

>> […]

>> I think it would be a very strong addition to the set of GNUstep applications.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Massimiliano Gubinelli
>
> Reading you mail I found your project very interesting and wanted to help. The picures on the wep page were even better. So I had a closer look at the source code and noticed that it was mostly C++ with a bit of Objective-C++. Not exactly my favourite programming languages. I am still willing to help you with any specific problem that you might find with GNUstep, but the project itself, though very promising, is nothing for me to work on.
>
> Fred
>

Thanks for the feedback Fred,
 yes the codebase is mostly C++ so the Cocoa/GNUstep backend has to be written in Objective-C++, there is not much we can do about this.

I think I will work on the project anyway but it would be nice to have someone from GNUstep which could take care of verifying that TeXmacs compiles also there, since I will develop mainly on a Mac and I do not have myself the time to do it. I'm willing to make modifications necessary for the system to work on GNUstep. Since TeXmacs is a GNU project it seems natural that it should works fine on GNUstep. When I set up the basic infrastructure I think I would need some help with Renaissance and with the fine tuning of the GUI: TeXmacs can build widgets and menus programatically from a scheme description and Renaissance is vital for us since otherwise AppKit does not provide the necessary auto layout features  (indeed we would leverage only AutoLayout and not the XML description language and the other parts of Renaissance).

If you would like to see TeXmacs in action, there are nice videos at the main site (www.texmacs.org). With respect to the previous mail on the thread I would like to stress the fact that TeXmacs does not depends on TeX, actually apart from the name has nothing to do with TeX. TeXmacs is a fully interactive, structured wysiwyg technical editor and all the typesetting is done internally (with algorithms as good as those of TeX).

I've set up a development branch in a gitorious repository (https://gitorious.org/~mgubi/texmacs/restructure) in the branch ns. It compiles fine on Mac but I do not know if it can compile also on GNUstep. Of course it is still preliminary and it does not work at all (the window shows up but the interaction is still work in progress)

Best,
Massimiliano

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Gregory Casamento
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