Re: [Texmacs-dev] Multiple column support

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On 23 Apr 2003, Nix N. Nix wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 12:19, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 11:18, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > > > I don't agree, because the distinction about a figure/table and
> > > > plain text is quite hard to formalize. For instance, the graphic
> > > > might be a tree instead of a postscript image, or a colored table.
> > >
> > > OK, then how about a single object as the body of the figure/table ?  I
> > > don't think a paragraph of text qualifies as either a graphic or a
> > > table.
> >
> > Why not? What exactly is the problem with having a body
> > consisting of general text?
>
> I don't have a problem with this per se, however, it makes the width
> constraint difficult to implement.  No, this is not reasoning the wrong
> way around, because of the followings:
>
> - Figures containing text are rare AFAIK
> - Figures are called "figures" because they are meant to contain
>   non-textual information
>
> Consequently, I believe it resonable in this case /and in this case
> alone/ to restrict the use of figures in order to better be able to
> translate them.
>
> Conversely, if you argue that it's OK for figures to contain arbitrary
> paragraphs of text, then you must implement the followings:

The point is that we do not want to make restrictions on
the valid kind of TeXmacs documents depending on whether
things export to LaTeX more or less well.

> - automatic wrapping for the text inside the figure when the figure
> width >= line width.
>
> - Next line (i.e., \\) doesn't work inside figures.

I agree, and I indeed plan to take care of this later on.

> I'm not trying to be antagonistic.  I simply believe that having a
> single, predictable object inside a figure is a reasonable restriction.
> Please realize that I'm not that adamant about this.  If you don't want
> to implement this restriction, that's fine, too.  I will continue to try
> to find a way to get LaTeX to tell me the width of a certain chunk of
> code, without having to produce that code twice.

You may also consider that the LaTeX output just does not work well
if the author does not meet this restriction and don't bother about it.