Re: [Texmacs-dev] Move by word, sentence, paragraph - and the Guile interface in general

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Felix Breuer wrote:
> Hello Joris, David and everybody else!
> 1) Move by word, sentence, paragraph
>
> These are features found in most text editors that I would like to see
> in TeXmacs as well. AFAIK they are not implemented [a]. I looked at the
> Guile interface, but didn't see any way to implement these functions. I
> might even dig into the C++ source, but not without some guidance
> beforehand. Pointers, anyone?

        tree_cursor.cpp
        edit_cursor.cpp

Notice that cursor-handling is in a phase of simplification,
due to the stronger and stronger support of DRDs. Nevertheless,
if you implement move-by-word/sentence/paragraph/structure,
then it should be easy to upgrade your implementation when necessary.
Since various people request such features, this would therefore
be a welcome contribution.

>   [a] I tried to and succeeded with implementing a multi-clipboard via
>   Guile, only to find out, that TeXmacs already *has* a multi-clipboard.
>   :-/ I should have checked more thoroughly in advance :) If there is
>   any interest I could turn my experiments into a mini-tutorial...

Of course; documentation is always useful.

As a general rule, it might be a good idea to centralize various kinds of
documentation we have on our CVS. Of course, certain documentation is
experimental, redundant, or not intended for general TeXmacs users
(I think in particular about short tutorials, like Andreas Seidl's or
Chu-Ching Huang's ones). We can put such documentation in a separate
section of the CVS. Such documentation may not be part of the main
documentation, but we should make it available by CVS and other means.

In fact, would there be something who is willing to collect all existing
documentation about TeXmacs, whether it is already known to us or not,
and put it on our CVS site?

> 2) Documentation of the Guile Interface
>
> Joris, you already mentioned your big plans (Guile as a plugin, pluggable
> stylesheet languages) to me. Do you have some time frame in mind?

Yes: before the end of the year, I would like to stabilize
the module system, the low-level routines for modifying documents
and implement a better system for contextual overloading.
The general philosophy of the Guile interface should then
be documented in a 10/20 pages chapter.

This should give a sufficiently stable framework for the next year or two.


> I am thinking about several features that I would like to implement, and I
> would like to know a) whether your plans include changes to the Guile
> (or C++) API that I should wait for. Also, I need to understand the Guile
> API better before I can begin and I am ready to help documenting the
> interface while I learn to use it. I have some general questions about
> the internal structure of the editor though, and if you do not mind I
> would ask them (in my next mail) and write up a summary of your answers
> for the manual :)

I do not think that it is necessary to wait before starting programming.
Even with the current imperfections, code which is integrated into TeXmacs
turns out to be quite maintainable: most changes are name changes and
if not, then the routines which need to be upgraded can easily be
localized using a "grep". Of course, this is less true for code which
is not inside TeXmacs and which you have to maintain on your own.
Nevertheless, I usually do post important changes to this mainling list.

I also would like to notice that the document format *is* stable now
(well, up to extensions and minor changes) and fully documented.
So Scheme routines which are built on top of a few modification routines
and the current document format should be easy to maintain.

> BTW, the documentation of TeXmacs improved *a lot* since the last time I
> looked (about a year ago). Congrats!

Thanks, I have indeed worked quite a lot on in it and ...
a lot still needs to be done ;^)