[OS X TeX] TeX and the wild wild world out there

[Massimiliano Gubinelli]

"serious documents requires LaTeX" (a previous post)

Recently I became aware of the existence of TeXmacs: TeXmacs is not a  
front-end for TeX, is a complete replacement of TeX (i.e. you do not  
have to install TeX to use TeXmacs) and produces nice (TeX-like)  
documents. It implements basic algorithms of TeX. It describes the  
content using a markup language (like XML).
It is integrated with programs like Maxima (computer-algebra system).  
IIRC it has also an integrated picturer editor.
Eventually the document can be exported to LaTeX. Editing can be done  
structurally or in WYSIWYG fashion (like in HTML editors). You can  
define macros, etc. it has a scheme-like (Guile) scripting language.

There are other attemps to improve TeX like XeTeX, PyTeX or LuaTeX  
(this latter very interesting) but none of them address the problem  
of a better integration of the typesetter with the editor and  
eventually with the user.

It seems to me that programs like TeXmacs (which itself it is (still)  
not perfect) point in the right direction for the future development  
of a widely usable systems for producing high quality documents and  
provide something that is appealing (in user perspective) like Word  
but powerful (at least) as TeX.

my 2c.

massimiliano gubinelli


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