Re: [Texmacs-dev] What you want to see, is not what you want to print

[Stéphane Payrard]

On (29/11/02 14:42), Alain Herreman wrote:
> From: "Alain Herreman" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Subject: [Texmacs-dev] What you want to see, is not what you want to print
> Reply-To: address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 14:42:39 +0100
> 
> Hi,
> 
> A remark concerning the general "philosophy" of TeXmacs.
> There are many many things you can do with TeXmacs you can't do once you
> have printed (using Scheme, Maxima etc.). And that's very interesting and
> important. Nevertheless, in my opinion TeXmacs is still too much concerned
> with printing . "Too much concerned" doesn't mean that TeXmacs should not be
> as good as it is in printing texts but that printing should not be the main
> and permanent concern while working with a text editor. But TeXmacs
> working-environnement is still very much concerned with printing : the size
> of the page on the screen is paper-size, environnements are all concerned
> with print (article, book, etc.), etc.
> In my opinion, the working environnement should be defined for itself. And
> it's only when you want to print that you should have a process transforming
> your working environnement in a printing one, the TeXmacs actual one (hiding
> what you want to hide, again..., and with all the sizes redefined according
> to paper-sizes).
> 
> WYSIWYG has to be completed : What you see on the screen, is not what you
> print! (WYSNOP)

If I understand you well, you want rich typesetting-like capabilities on
the screen for its own sake. Or for the sake of tools based on
TeXmacs.

> 
> In the beginning, printers where also very much concerned to print books
> looking like manuscripts...

A new media finds acceptance by emulating an older one.  The computer
media is so versatile that using it mostly for the sake of printing
seems retrograde. But the computer media is so difficult to master
that doing so may be a safe path.

Compare that path with the dispersion of XML efforts in every single
direction. The results are quite poor compared to the huge investment
that has been made.

One reason that The Xerox vision of computer as a paperless media has
yet to be realized probably is it has not been yet clearly defined.


> 
> I know it is possible to do that with ts, but I wonder if it would not be
> better to put in more in the core of  TeXmacs : maybe printing is no longer
> the main task of a text editor.
> 
> I don't know if it is the right place for this remark, which doesn't help
> very much..., and certainly it is already well known by Joris.

Many people that are interested in TeXmacs have expectations that go
beyond edition of document for sake of printing. Some want it to do
literate programming. Some see in TeXmacs-based literate programming
little more than the Knuth weaving process to print a literate
document.  I see way more but I don't have worked out all the
consequences so I eventually decided to be patient instead of
pestering Joris to add new capabilities.

Let TeXmacs reach maturity as a mere wysiwyg tool for paper document
typesetting. Once TeXmacs will reach the desired stability and will
expose stable APIs and proper documentation, I am sure that we will
expand it beyond that clearly stated goal.


> 
> Alain Herreman
> 


--
 stef