Re: Margins (Was: [Texmacs-dev] Applied patches for version 1.0.1.8)

[Nix N. Nix]

On Wed, 2003-03-12 at 03:12, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:

[...]

>   The problem here is that I have not decided yet how to handle
>   the additional data for a document. Maybe we should send just
>   one tree with all additional data in it, in a similar way as
>   we do when saving files. Also, you should be careful *not*
>   to export the default values of style parameters to LaTeX,
>   because these defaults are not part of the structure.

That's a good idea - I'm thinking, if we sent the same tree we send to
the TeXmacs -> Scheme converter to /all/ the converters, then all the
converters would have all the information.  We would then have to modify
the converters to throw away most of that information (we won't be able
to implement handling all the new information at the same time), and
then, gradually, pick more and more of the tasty morsels out of the new,
richer tree - yes, it's a dumb metaphor, but it's the picture that comes
to mind :o) That would be cool, since we could use make_document () to
create that tree, as it's done for Scheme.

The only problem would be exporting selections, which do not include the
"initial" subtree, IIRC.  I suppose we /could/ pass an empty "initial"
subtree, as well as empty ones for all the other trees (like "style"),
and modify tmtex et. al. to handle that case.

Don't default style parameter values /become/ part of the structure as
soon as the buffer comes into existence ?  After all, if I open up
TeXmacs and just start typing my, say, letter, then print it, won't I
get default margins and a default document structure ?  My interest is
to make the LaTeX generated by TeXmacs have the /exact/ same layout and
structure as the TeXmacs document itself.  Furthermore, I would like the
"look" of the document to be the same as well (hopefully, because the
LaTeX structure mirrors the TeXmacs structure faithfully).  IOW, the
product of, say, "Preview with ghostview" should "look" the same as if I
had opened TeXmacs, typed something, then performed Export -> LaTeX,
followed by

pdflatex filename.tex && xpdf filename.pdf

It should "look" the same, because there are instructions in the LaTeX
source covering the exact same document parameters as the TeXmacs
source.  Furthermore, these parameters have the same values. So, if the
user doesn't want to change the default margins, or she doesn't want to
pick a different document style, that doesn't mean there /are no
margins/ or there /is no document style/, right ?

[...]