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The main issue I have with TeXmacs (and similar software like LyX) is that it's hard to collaborate with others who don't use it. TeXmacs and LyX both support

The main issue I have with TeXmacs (and similar software like LyX) is that it's hard to collaborate with others who don't use it. TeXmacs and LyX both support exporting to LaTeX, but YMMV with the readability of the LaTeX source produced, which makes it near impossible to share it with your coauthors. Also, it's hard to use them to typeset articles for journals that often require the authors use a specific style file. None of this is criticism of TeXmacs per se, and I have nothing but respect for the developers, but I believe these are the main reasons why TeXmacs isn't popular among people who write math.

noobermin 5y ago
I generally use TeXmacs for notes and derivations for myself. For journal articles that obviously will be collaborations I use just plain latex of course. I think the most I did was in grad school is that I wrote my candidacy report in TeXmacs, but that was obviously just something I wrote myself and it didn't require a specific style. I think a happy medium would be if you could export snippets of latex from a larger texmacs doc but I haven't actually tried it.
- mgubi 5y ago
  I generally use TeXmacs for notes, derivations, lectures, articles, all, of course. Most of my papers in the last 7 years, around 15 and all my lectures in the same period, circa 2 courses a year. More in detail, all these papers are been written completely in TeXmacs and then converted to LaTeX to be put in arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09637 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09637 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01513 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01513 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.14264 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.14264 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06881 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06881 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.04830 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.04830 https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11187 https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11187 https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04422 https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04422 https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12014 https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12014 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10814 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10814 https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03118 https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03118 https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03195 https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03195 https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07373 https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07373 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07886 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07886 https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.03877 https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.03877 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00157 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00157 Similarly all the lecture notes in this page: https://www.iam.uni-bonn.de/abteilung-gubinelli/teaching https://www.iam.uni-bonn.de/abteilung-gubinelli/teaching I think most of the discussion in this thread does not report any real current experience using it.
  - noobermin 5y ago
    Interesting. How do you collaborate with others who just use latex? Just as a note, I do use it today, just not to publish anything as I mostly have to adhere to journal article styles (can't just get by on preprints in my field) and I collaborate with others.
    - mgubi 5y ago
      I convince them to use TeXmacs :). At least I do not want to use LaTeX anymore (note that I've been hardcore LaTeX users for long time and also developed software to support LaTeX, e.g. TeXniscope, a previewer for DVI/PDF files in the early times of MacOS). Conversion to LaTeX format happens in the last stage of the submission (to arXiv or to a journal). It takes usually from 1 to maybe 10 min to have the file ready, maybe small tweaks for some bugs which I report and then get corrected. Three of my students wrote their PhD thesis with TeXmacs, and at least two/three other people I know. If I need to collaborate on a file which is being written in LaTeX I write my parts in TeXmacs and then I paste them in the file. Most of my presentations are also written in TeXmacs and in these days I use it to teach via Zoom, or to discuss with colleagues/students, make computations, etc... Not really using paper anymore. If you need to do algebraic manipulations, then it is more convenient to copy/paste on the screen that to rewrite the same equation several times with small variations on the paper. Using the submission requirements as an argument seems so wrong to me, it is like saying: since the final format is PDF we need to write our ideas directly in PDF... if one day editors will decide to use XML as submission format, then what? I do not want to think about mathematics with a screen divided in two parts, and the quality of the process is also very important to me. I spend maybe months to work on a paper in TeXmacs and at most only 1h in LaTeX when I really need to because editors are become used to require from the authors the work a professional typesetter would have done in the past.
  - JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
    Just wanted to say I loved your course on martingales approx 7 years ago at Dauphine, maybe it was already in TeXmacs :)
    - 5y ago
- GiovanniP 5y ago
  > I think a happy medium would be if you could export snippets of latex from a larger texmacs doc but I haven't actually tried it. In the TeXmacs editor Edit->Copy to->LaTeX (one might have to add some macro definitions in the preamble of the LaTeX document)
GiovanniP 5y ago
Perhaps a support software to guide the writing of both the TeXmacs and the LaTeX versions of a document so that conversion is straightforward, and therefore easier to make it readable for the converter, might be useful (see discussion at http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/an-idea-for-collaborative-work-with-latex-users/426 http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/an-idea-for-collaborative-work-wit...). For what regards the journal style files, as far as I know they are being refined in TeXmacs---my feeling is that a comprehensive set will be reached only through user contributions.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
(La)TeX is being hobbled anyway by having so many non-UTF-8-first legacy tools and not being able to directly export to a document format appropriate for electronic documents. What about the readability of HTML exported by TeXmacs ? Can you reverse import that HTML without losses ? Can the HTML be exported as a single file ? (MTHML ? (Firefox Y U no support ?? :'( ))
- GiovanniP 5y ago
  For the readability of HTML exported by TeXmacs, please take a look yourself at the html files in https://github.com/texmacs/notes/tree/main/docs https://github.com/texmacs/notes/tree/main/docs I think that the developers would be happy to hear any comment on that topic. I am not able to answer your other questions, I hope someone else will answer them.
- mgubi 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand a use case for lossless reverse HTML import. TeXmacs can import HTML (e.g. Wikipedia pages) including proper recovery of mathematical formulas from MathJaX or MathML. TeXmacs can export HTML with math in MathML (since 2005), MathJaX or images according to user preferences. The exported HTML human-readable (although with some CSS here and there) like the LaTeX export (who say the contrary has visibly never used TeXmacs, at least recently). You can check the quality of the HTML export by looking at TeXmacs website (https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html) and at the blog (https://texmacs.github.io/notes/docs/main.html https://texmacs.github.io/notes/docs/main.html) or also at this other blog (https://plopezadeva.com https://plopezadeva.com) or at the webpage of Joris van der Hoeven, the main developer (http://www.texmacs.org/joris/main/joris.html http://www.texmacs.org/joris/main/joris.html). Comments and suggestions for improvements are welcome. TeXmacs do not use UTF-8 (or any other Unicode encoding) internally but support an arbitrary, extensible encoding (much like Unicode) which can be converted to Unicode without problems. The reason is simple: TeXmacs was initiated before Unicode was widely supported (~1998). Even in current times we see few reason to move to Unicode, all the TeXmacs internals are independent from external libraries or tools. It was properly working in ~1999, it works now and it will work as long as a minimal C++ compiler works.

noobermin 5y ago

I generally use TeXmacs for notes and derivations for myself. For journal articles that obviously will be collaborations I use just plain latex of course. I think the most I did was in grad school is that I wrote my candidacy report in TeXmacs, but that was obviously just something I wrote myself and it didn't require a specific style. I think a happy medium would be if you could export snippets of latex from a larger texmacs doc but I haven't actually tried it.

mgubi 5y ago
I generally use TeXmacs for notes, derivations, lectures, articles, all, of course. Most of my papers in the last 7 years, around 15 and all my lectures in the same period, circa 2 courses a year. More in detail, all these papers are been written completely in TeXmacs and then converted to LaTeX to be put in arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09637 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09637 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01513 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.01513 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.14264 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.14264 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06881 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.06881 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.04830 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.04830 https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11187 https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11187 https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04422 https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04422 https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12014 https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12014 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10814 https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10814 https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03118 https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03118 https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03195 https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03195 https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07373 https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07373 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07886 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07886 https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.03877 https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.03877 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00157 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00157 Similarly all the lecture notes in this page: https://www.iam.uni-bonn.de/abteilung-gubinelli/teaching https://www.iam.uni-bonn.de/abteilung-gubinelli/teaching I think most of the discussion in this thread does not report any real current experience using it.
- noobermin 5y ago
  Interesting. How do you collaborate with others who just use latex? Just as a note, I do use it today, just not to publish anything as I mostly have to adhere to journal article styles (can't just get by on preprints in my field) and I collaborate with others.
  - mgubi 5y ago
    I convince them to use TeXmacs :). At least I do not want to use LaTeX anymore (note that I've been hardcore LaTeX users for long time and also developed software to support LaTeX, e.g. TeXniscope, a previewer for DVI/PDF files in the early times of MacOS). Conversion to LaTeX format happens in the last stage of the submission (to arXiv or to a journal). It takes usually from 1 to maybe 10 min to have the file ready, maybe small tweaks for some bugs which I report and then get corrected. Three of my students wrote their PhD thesis with TeXmacs, and at least two/three other people I know. If I need to collaborate on a file which is being written in LaTeX I write my parts in TeXmacs and then I paste them in the file. Most of my presentations are also written in TeXmacs and in these days I use it to teach via Zoom, or to discuss with colleagues/students, make computations, etc... Not really using paper anymore. If you need to do algebraic manipulations, then it is more convenient to copy/paste on the screen that to rewrite the same equation several times with small variations on the paper. Using the submission requirements as an argument seems so wrong to me, it is like saying: since the final format is PDF we need to write our ideas directly in PDF... if one day editors will decide to use XML as submission format, then what? I do not want to think about mathematics with a screen divided in two parts, and the quality of the process is also very important to me. I spend maybe months to work on a paper in TeXmacs and at most only 1h in LaTeX when I really need to because editors are become used to require from the authors the work a professional typesetter would have done in the past.
- JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
  Just wanted to say I loved your course on martingales approx 7 years ago at Dauphine, maybe it was already in TeXmacs :)
  - 5y ago
GiovanniP 5y ago
> I think a happy medium would be if you could export snippets of latex from a larger texmacs doc but I haven't actually tried it. In the TeXmacs editor Edit->Copy to->LaTeX (one might have to add some macro definitions in the preamble of the LaTeX document)

GiovanniP 5y ago

Perhaps a support software to guide the writing of both the TeXmacs and the LaTeX versions of a document so that conversion is straightforward, and therefore easier to make it readable for the converter, might be useful (see discussion at http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/an-idea-for-collaborative-work-with-latex-users/426 http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/an-idea-for-collaborative-work-wit...). For what regards the journal style files, as far as I know they are being refined in TeXmacs---my feeling is that a comprehensive set will be reached only through user contributions.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

(La)TeX is being hobbled anyway by having so many non-UTF-8-first legacy tools and not being able to directly export to a document format appropriate for electronic documents. What about the readability of HTML exported by TeXmacs ? Can you reverse import that HTML without losses ? Can the HTML be exported as a single file ? (MTHML ? (Firefox Y U no support ?? :'( ))

GiovanniP 5y ago
For the readability of HTML exported by TeXmacs, please take a look yourself at the html files in https://github.com/texmacs/notes/tree/main/docs https://github.com/texmacs/notes/tree/main/docs I think that the developers would be happy to hear any comment on that topic. I am not able to answer your other questions, I hope someone else will answer them.
mgubi 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand a use case for lossless reverse HTML import. TeXmacs can import HTML (e.g. Wikipedia pages) including proper recovery of mathematical formulas from MathJaX or MathML. TeXmacs can export HTML with math in MathML (since 2005), MathJaX or images according to user preferences. The exported HTML human-readable (although with some CSS here and there) like the LaTeX export (who say the contrary has visibly never used TeXmacs, at least recently). You can check the quality of the HTML export by looking at TeXmacs website (https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html) and at the blog (https://texmacs.github.io/notes/docs/main.html https://texmacs.github.io/notes/docs/main.html) or also at this other blog (https://plopezadeva.com https://plopezadeva.com) or at the webpage of Joris van der Hoeven, the main developer (http://www.texmacs.org/joris/main/joris.html http://www.texmacs.org/joris/main/joris.html). Comments and suggestions for improvements are welcome. TeXmacs do not use UTF-8 (or any other Unicode encoding) internally but support an arbitrary, extensible encoding (much like Unicode) which can be converted to Unicode without problems. The reason is simple: TeXmacs was initiated before Unicode was widely supported (~1998). Even in current times we see few reason to move to Unicode, all the TeXmacs internals are independent from external libraries or tools. It was properly working in ~1999, it works now and it will work as long as a minimal C++ compiler works.