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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?

#51

Post by mgubi »

sfpotter wrote: post #50
kzrdude wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use it, so I don't know. This is how texmacs describe it themselves: “Converters exist for TeX/LaTeX and Html/Mathml. Notice that TeXmacs is not based on TeX/LaTeX.” To me that sounds like a tool that is not for working with Latex, but it can convert in a pinch. It's a different category, it's own thing. Fine, but not Tex/Latex. The “Limitations of the TeXmacs to LaTeX converter” from their webpage sound pret…

It was a rhetorical question. I understand how TeXmacs works. It does use LaTeX: it contains a usable LaTeX importer/exporter. Yes, the importer and exporter aren’t perfect, but they are used in a nontrivial capacity nevertheless. LaTeX is such an integral part of the research workflow for so many academics that leaving it behind entirely is not an option. So instead many people use TeXmacs to generate LaTeX for subm…

The phrase "it uses LaTeX" means that it runs the program LaTeX or that it need the "LaTeX format". Neither is true. Similarly you would say that "PanDoc uses Word?" or that a program that export to Word use Word. To me if you want to say that a program exports to a particular format just say so. If you want to say that a program needs a working installation of another program Y to work then you can say "it uses Y". So I think it is not correct to say that TeXmacs uses LaTeX. It can import/export it, like it can export/import PDF, HTML and other formats. TeXmacs does not need a working LateX installation to work. It comes with all its batteries included and on the Mac the app weight < 150 MB. That's all you need (including the LaTeX importer/exporter which is written in Scheme).

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

#52

Post by hprotagonist »

wosined wrote: post #41
hprotagonist wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you either compile LaTeX often, which gets very tedious once the compile time gets longer for larger documents, or you can get a confusing error message from LaTeX that takes you half an hour to deciper. That is my experience. have you played with rubber or latexmk? > Texmacs does the job of all of those tools better except for the “standard library” of the latex/tex/ctan world and vast seas of dependent work i…

I don't know what software you are using but, latexmk on my machine takes at least 30seconds to compile a 40 page document with 164 equations and 46 images. Texmacs doesn't have to, it just does the rendering incrementally, references get updated when you insert a new one. You can call an update on the whole buffer, which you normally don't have to, and it updates the same document in less than 6 seconds. Some import…

post-coffee, it occurred to me that i do have an alternative setup for authoring latex documents that greatly reduces my time spent writing latex — it’s org mode. I can hammer in some raw latex the way you can inline html in markdown, if i have to, but for the most part i don’t need to.

someone once described this to me as “treating latex as the IR” which seems relatively correct; for me, it’s a nice way to square the circle of “i want *.tex eventually, but i’d like to write it without as much fuss”.

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

#54

Post by mgubi »

gjvc wrote: post #53
mgubi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U

no shit, but thank you for the unnecessary clarification

looking at some other comments in this thread and also to my experience, it not unnecessary clarification in the large. I'm glad you just were doing some humor. :)

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

#56

Post by sfpotter »

mgubi wrote: post #51
sfpotter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a rhetorical question. I understand how TeXmacs works. It does use LaTeX: it contains a usable LaTeX importer/exporter. Yes, the importer and exporter aren’t perfect, but they are used in a nontrivial capacity nevertheless. LaTeX is such an integral part of the research workflow for so many academics that leaving it behind entirely is not an option. So instead many people use TeXmacs to generate LaTeX for subm…

The phrase "it uses LaTeX" means that it runs the program LaTeX or that it need the "LaTeX format". Neither is true. Similarly you would say that "PanDoc uses Word?" or that a program that export to Word use Word. To me if you want to say that a program exports to a particular format just say so. If you want to say that a program needs a working installation of another program Y to work then you can say "it uses Y".…

Part of the problem is that LaTeX is meant in multiple senses: there is the LaTeX installation along with all relevant programs, and then there is the LaTeX format/programming language. When I say I "use C", it means that I write C programs. In this sense, TeXmacs does use (the) LaTeX (programming language). It includes Scheme code which translates the internal TeXmacs format to LaTeX for obvious and extremely useful reasons. To me that means it uses LaTeX. YMMV.

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

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

wosined wrote: post #41
hprotagonist wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you either compile LaTeX often, which gets very tedious once the compile time gets longer for larger documents, or you can get a confusing error message from LaTeX that takes you half an hour to deciper. That is my experience. have you played with rubber or latexmk? > Texmacs does the job of all of those tools better except for the “standard library” of the latex/tex/ctan world and vast seas of dependent work i…

I don't know what software you are using but, latexmk on my machine takes at least 30seconds to compile a 40 page document with 164 equations and 46 images. Texmacs doesn't have to, it just does the rendering incrementally, references get updated when you insert a new one. You can call an update on the whole buffer, which you normally don't have to, and it updates the same document in less than 6 seconds. Some import…

> No tool will have a standard library as big as TeX/LaTeX when it is created, if that is the bar you set for new software, then you will use TeX forever.

TeXmacs isn’t new software that was just created, though.

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

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

GiovanniP wrote: post #16
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.

> Here as far as I understand the fact that TeX is a Turing-complete language makes it impossible to write a converter for TeX.

Converters whose source, target, or both are Turing complete languages are... not uncommon in computing.

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

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

b33j0r wrote: post #48
marssaxman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a problem, but everyone was forced to put up with Javascript anyway, and here we are...

Not disagreeing but here’s another lens. Applies to TeX as well. “Java” in javascript kinda meant “modern computer programming” to the audience, in a very very inaccurate and zeitgeist-hype-train way. People who thought “oh yeah, I’ve heard of java, and scripting sounds easier than programming,” looked into it. ECMA wasn’t a thing yet, but it might have sounded like a skincare product to those same ears, or something…

> ECMA wasn’t a thing yet

ECMA is much older than JS.

ECMAScript wasn’t a thing yet, I think you mean.

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

#60

Post by kzrdude »

mgubi wrote: post #43
kzrdude wrote: post #28

Things that are great usually come through anyway. Is that too optimistic? If you think Texmacs is great, maybe it also has come over a threshold to greatness - it wasn't there for all of the past 20 years(?) Things such as your outreach in this post is what's needed for a great program to become more well known. My spontaneous feeling is that it's very upsetting that it has TeX in the name but does not use Tex or La…

Not to mention JavaScript, then :)

Exactly, the same kind of name problem.
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