--- Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> It seems to me that the material which is
> the input/output transcript should be displayed in one
> of the more advanced display systems. Using the ascii-based
> display means that the material takes too much room and
> is hard to read.
>
> When I last tried to make such documentation I was
> faced with the same situation, and I think I also used
> ascii text.
>
> The fact that you are still doing this suggests several
> things.
> 1. The advanced front end (Texmacs looks best)
> are not good enough to support
> what you want. (No cut and paste of typeset expressions?)
Actually, I didn't use TeXmacs because I figured ascii was the most
universal (Windows users currently only have xmaxima, so they don't get
any of the formatted stuff). I think we could include texmacs sessions
instead, if that seems better to everyone.
> 2. The displays don't reflect accurate or fully
> functional formatting,
> for example, does Texmacs handle multiple line displays?
I believe it does, but I'm not sure how well. The person who wrote the
interface I believe said it needs more work before it's really robust.
I know it crashes and burns if you try to load the file used for make
test stuff. Other than that, it has done ok in the limited trials I
have put it through.
> I am trying to get Texmacs installed (a student is
> working on it... it seems ok on Solaris; I use maxima on
> windows though!)
That's the problem - we have no good universal interface that can do
what TeXmacs can do. We have a lot of work to do before we are ready
to think about that problem - it will be highly nontrivial no matter
how we look at it, and my guess is that a really well done interface
will involve writing bindings for some universal graphical toolkit.
(TCL/TK just doesn't do it, for me anyway.)
> Also texmacs seems not at all like emacs to me, which
> is a disappointment.. I wanted all of emacs + display sections
> in a notebook.
Hmm... well, you could ask the developer of TeXmacs about that, and
see what he says. I don't know that much about it.
CY
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