[Texmacs-dev] Re: [TeXmacs] New paper on TeXmacs

[Henri Lesourd]

(This is only a partial answer limited to the items
for which I know some things)

-->
--->
David G. Wonnacott wrote:

> I would also like to see:
>
> 1) Something about how to learn what functions I can call from
>   scheme. I know I can use things that I can type with "\" when I
>   build macros, but I'm not sure how to figure out
>
>   a) what I can call from scheme -- I've been using the "help" menu
>      to search source code; is there a better way?
>
>  
Basically, you can call :

-> Functions from the standard TeXmacs API (documentation about
  that is underway under Help/Scheme extensions [only available
  from the CVS currently]) ;

-> Macro language functions ;

-> Other Scheme functions (including lots of useful
  standard Scheme functions from the various Scheme
  SRFIs).


>   b) whether (and how) I can call back into the macro language from a
>      scheme function
>
>  
Use (texmacs-exec), e.g. : << (texmacs-exec '(merge "A" "B")) >>.


> 2) A sentence or two about the relative limitations of the two
>   mechanisms (macros vs. scheme)
The macros are faster than Scheme, but the macro language
is more limited than Scheme (i.e., as soon as you need to
perform complex calculations, it becomes difficult not to
use Scheme ; on the other hand, for most of the usual cases,
TeXmacs macros are much more convenient to write, and the
mechanism is lightweight (I mean, you only need a stylesheet
file which is also a TeXmacs document, whether with Scheme
macros you need to do a full-blown plugin)).


> All in all, it's nice to see more documentation that I can use to
> introduce other folks to TeXmacs (I've forwarded the URL's for this
> document and Henri's page to a colleague already).
>
>  
Some more documentation is currently planned right now,
including this topic of programming in TeXmacs as well.