Re: [Texmacs-dev] New text editing ideas?

[David Allouche]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 09:44:40AM +1100, Amir Michail wrote:
>
> http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/
> 
> This project apparently has focused on making
> text editing more efficient.  I have not read it
> in any detail yet.  Perhaps there are ideas there
> that might benefit TeXmacs?

I had a look. I read the (small) documentation and experimented a
little bit. There seem to be a great vision but I am not really
convinced by what I have seen yet. Maybe I have not tried hard enough.

Esp. the Humane Quasimode seems a bit awkyard to me. I do not want to
have to juggle with left and right shift keys when touch-typing
commands, and I do not want to get carpal because I use only the left
shift key while typing commands.

One thing where I agree is that if one want to make something better
than the existing GUI and CLI, one has to make something different.
In many respect that is also part of the philosphy of TeXmacs.

Also, it looks like they tried to take advantage of the power of
vi-like 'motion arguments' and emacs-like 'incremental search'. I feel
there is something good in that. Also that Raskin guy has a healthy
preoccupation for small GUI details.

That is probably a good project to monitor. However, at the end of the
manual:

    Distribution of this in-progress software is for testing and
    illustrative purposes only and does not confer any rights,
    including rights to reproduce copyrighted material and patented
    inventions. Please do not share it further.
    [...]
    Various parts of this work are covered by one or more patents and
    patents pending

Essentially I would like to be able to give him the finger, but until
the debate around european swpats is settled, that would be dangerous.

-- 
David Allouche         | GNU TeXmacs -- Writing is a pleasure
Free software engineer |    http://www.texmacs.org
   http://ddaa.net     |    http://alqua.com/tmresources
   address@hidden  |    address@hidden
TeXmacs is NOT a LaTeX front-end and is unrelated to emacs.