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Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

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Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#11

Post by hprotagonist »

Freak_NL wrote: post #10

The name doesn't help, but while it may produce output out of the box that looks as good as LaTeX, the website also doesn't directly answer another question which matters to people who need to do typesetting things with it that have been solved by others: the huge package ecosystem of LaTeX (and the batteries-included distributions like TeX Live).

Bingo.

I usually need to lean relatively hard on CTAN, and if you’ve got a niche tool with better UX but no widespread adoption in a very entrenched user base, you’re not going to take over.

when i want “texmacs”, i use the other GNU tools: https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/ , emacs, and pdf-tools.

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#12

Post by hprotagonist »

xenonite wrote: post #7

I prefer using TeXstudio as a TeX editor. Naturally, I thought that TeXmacs is the pendant in Emacs. Up to this point it did not occur to me that TeXmacs is _not_ using TeX at all. I guess that I am not alone with that thought. Does it use Emacs, then?

it doesn’t. auctex does: https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#14

Post by GiovanniP »

Freak_NL wrote: post #10

The name doesn't help, but while it may produce output out of the box that looks as good as LaTeX, the website also doesn't directly answer another question which matters to people who need to do typesetting things with it that have been solved by others: the huge package ecosystem of LaTeX (and the batteries-included distributions like TeX Live).

For questions about TeXmacs please try the forum at http://forum.texmacs.cn/

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#16

Post by GiovanniP »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #9

One could argue that it is held back by not being based on TeX (depends on how good the export is) and emacs (probably).

Here as far as I understand the fact that TeX is a Turing-complete language makes it impossible to write a converter for TeX. I read a post by Joris van der Hoeven where he said that TeX held back every other program by making it impossible to write converters. I did not find that post so I link to

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604311

where he talks about the same issue.

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#17

Post by II2II »

It's really hard to say.

Producing documents for publication is a big part of the reason for using software like TeX, both because of its capabilities and requirements of the publisher. Given the audience of TeXmacs appears similar to that of TeX, in terms of capabilities but not the requirements of publishers, it was not terribly appealing to a wide audience and a significant factor holding it back for its specialized audience.

That said, the name did encourage me to at least look at it back in my university days (a very long time ago). When I found that it was not a front-end for TeX, I simply moved on.

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#18

Post by zitterbewegung »

When I used to use TeXmacs I would have annoying glitches to the point where I just called back to TeX with regular Emacs. I think its general clunkyness really held it back. The problem now is that people still use regular Emacs and share the TeX file locally or use a service like overleaf that allows for collaboration online. TeXmacs in my opinion tried to solve a problem for a small subset of users that it didn't really catch on.

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#19

Post by amichail »

II2II wrote: post #17

It's really hard to say. Producing documents for publication is a big part of the reason for using software like TeX, both because of its capabilities and requirements of the publisher. Given the audience of TeXmacs appears similar to that of TeX, in terms of capabilities but not the requirements of publishers, it was not terribly appealing to a wide audience and a significant factor holding it back for its specializ…

What about for producing documents not for publication such as writing up assignments, lecture notes, personal/research notes, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: Did TeXmacs' doubly misleading name hold it back for 20 years?

#20

Post by GiovanniP »

hprotagonist wrote: post #11
Freak_NL wrote: post #10

The name doesn't help, but while it may produce output out of the box that looks as good as LaTeX, the website also doesn't directly answer another question which matters to people who need to do typesetting things with it that have been solved by others: the huge package ecosystem of LaTeX (and the batteries-included distributions like TeX Live).

Bingo. I usually need to lean relatively hard on CTAN, and if you’ve got a niche tool with better UX but no widespread adoption in a very entrenched user base, you’re not going to take over. when i want “texmacs”, i use the other GNU tools: https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/ , emacs, and pdf-tools.

> if you’ve got a niche tool with better UX but no widespread adoption in a very entrenched user base, you’re not going to take over

Yet I think that it is necessary to keep promoting TeXmacs, a niche yet nice tool, as the shortcomings of TeX are significant and I think we need a better took for document preparation.

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