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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa TeX
        
(Message started by: amichail on May 6^th, 2007, 11:16am)

Title: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa TeX
Post by amichail on May 6^th, 2007, 11:16am

With faster computers, TeXmacs came along to give you a truely WYSIWYG TeX-like real-time typesetter. What you see while editing is exactly what you get in the output. Some clever programming made this possible. But with even faster computers, BaKoMa TeX Word gives us truely WYSIWYG LaTeX by simply running TeX in the background -- all that TeXmacs incremental cleverness is not so important when your computer is really fast and your document is not that long (e.g., for conference papers).

So basically, faster computers made TeXmacs possible but even faster computers may make it unnecessary!

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 7^th, 2007, 9:35am

That program is really amazing! So much so, that I decided to buy it. Its amusing that my word processor is now just as processor intensive as many of the computer games I play. Now I can justify spending so much on it! ;D

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Icarus on May 7^th, 2007, 3:23pm

I take it you discovered you were doing something wrong yesterday when you thought it wasn't worthwhile for an old hand like you?

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 7^th, 2007, 7:36pm

I see you saw my original post, Icarus :-[. I was having problems using the \input command in BaKoMa TeX. It turns out that the issue was BaKoMa TeX has different filename conventions than MiKTeX, and this was causing the issue. In MiKTeX, to input the file C:\texmf\headers\header.tex, I would type

\input{/texmf/headers/header.tex}

In BaKoMa TeX, it is

\input{C:/texmf/headers/header.tex}

The later code also seems to work in MiKTeX, so maybe I just wasn't doing things the "proper" way to begin with. I don't tend to actually study different programming languages and such to learn them; I just tend to experiment and read documentation when absolutely necessary.

The BaKoMa TeX documentation does not seem to discuss its file conventions anywhere in the included documentation; I could be wrong on this, but the documentation also has poor search capabilities and is written by someone with somewhat limited English ability. So I ended up getting things working through some experimentation and trial and error.

There are still a few unintuitive/annoying quirks in BaKoMa TeX, and I am pretty sure these are not my inexperience speaking. But as far as I am aware there is no other piece of software that does something similar, and the WYSIWYG editing is really amazing. The minor annoyances are well worth the increased productivity from seeing actual mathematical symbols as you type instead of seeing tons of complicated TeX code, especially in highly technical writing.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by amichail on May 8^th, 2007, 9:23am

I had problems with the cursor drawn in the wrong place in math mode. Although harmless, it's pretty annoying. Did you encounter this problem?

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 8^th, 2007, 9:36am

I'm not sure if I've had this problem or not. I'm not usually using the "intended" method of entering formulas and stuff into the program. I made the tex code window large and have it next to the dvi window, and almost exclusively type into the tex code window. The cursor in the dvi window seems to follow along properly though, so I actually watch the dvi window while I'm doing this. Since I already know tex, I would rather type in the tex window than learn all the shortcuts and things that are necessary to type efficiently in the dvi window.

I have a 24" widescreen monitor, so both of these windows are still very large when I'm doing this. I can see that on a smaller screen this setup might not be optimal.

I do wish that there was a way to click on the dvi window and have the tex window cursor be the active one. Right now clicking on the dvi window places a cursor in the dvi window, a cursor in the tex window, and activates the cursor in the dvi window; the effect of this now is that I always click in the dvi window where I want the cursor to go and then click in the tex window where the cursor is. This is still a lot more effective than the inverse search capabilities of Yap, though.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by ThudanBlunder on May 8^th, 2007, 9:52am

Excuse my ignorance, but how is BaKoMa TeX better than MathType (besides no doubt being cheaper)?

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by amichail on May 8^th, 2007, 9:55am

on 05/08/07 at 09:52:43, ThudanBlunder wrote:

Excuse my ignorance, but how is BaKoMa TeX better than MathType (besides no doubt being cheaper)?

BaKoMA TeX gives you WYSIWYG editing using the high quality typesetting of TeX.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 8^th, 2007, 10:32am

You know how a word-processed document never really looks like it would belong in a book? Using TeX makes documents that do belong in books.

Actually BaKoMa tex is comparably priced to MathType. But TeX in general (which BaKoMa tex just provides a very nice editor for) will always look immeasurably more professional than something like MathType that works within a program like Word. Even documents without any formulas in them look much nicer when typeset using TeX than when "processed" using Word.

When I applied for grad school and fellowships, I used TeX to write all my essays, even when they had few or no mathematical symbols in them. The additional impact factor of a document just looking nice from the onset was well worth the slight extra hassle to me. (Although it really isn't much harder, once you know what you are doing.) Virtually all mathematical journal articles are also typeset using TeX.

One other advantage of TeX over MathType is the lack of the somewhat cumbersome user interface of MathType. When everything is coded using the keyboard as text, you can type more quickly once you know all the commands.

Before beginning to learn TeX about five years ago, I used MathType. I had the same opinion as you - MathType looks pretty nice, and without being exposed to TeX (i.e. seeing lots of well - texed documents) I didn't realize just how much better TeX is.

I've attached a short expository article that I wrote for a class a couple of years ago as an example. Something to notice is that tex is somewhat "object oriented." I can create a "Theorem" object, for instance, the program will give it a label, and I can later refer to it as Theorem (label of the theorem). In other words, all the numbering is done by TeX and makes sure the labels stay consistent. TeX can also be used in this manner to do things like create an index, a bibliography with references in the text, or reference an equation or an item in the list. The idea is that technical aspects of the typesetting should be taken care of by the program, so that you just worry about writing what you want.

If you want a comparison with what mathtype can do, try writing some of the equations and text from the document I've posted, then print both documents and compare them side by side.

Of course, BaKoMa TeX just acts as a nice editing program; TeX itself is free, although TeX is a suite of command-line programs. Most beginning users start out using some sort of "shell" program, which acts as an editor. BaKoMa TeX is actually its own TeX distribution, and not a shell. So you don't need to obtain TeX to get BaKoMa TeX.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by amichail on May 8^th, 2007, 1:33pm

If you don't care about TeX/LaTeX compatibility (e.g., because you don't need to use a supplied LaTeX style file say), then I think you will be very happy with the free TeXmacs.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by towr on May 8^th, 2007, 2:21pm

How does bakoma tex behave on something like


\documentclass{article}

\setlength{\unitlength}{1pt}

\newcounter{numberofpages}
\setcounter{numberofpages}{1000}

\newcounter{xpos}
\setcounter{xpos}{0}
\newcounter{ypos}
\setcounter{ypos}{100}
\newcounter{xspeed}
\setcounter{xspeed}{0}
\newcounter{yspeed}
\setcounter{yspeed}{15}
\newcounter{xchange}
\setcounter{xchange}{-1}
\newcounter{ychange}
\setcounter{ychange}{-1}

\def\drawstep{
\begin{picture}(220,220)(10,10)
\put(\value{xpos},\value{ypos}){\circle*{5]
\end{picture}
\addtocounter{xpos}{\value{xspeed]
\ifnum\value{xpos}>100
\addtocounter{xspeed}{\value{xchange]
\else
\addtocounter{xspeed}{-\value{xchange]
\fi

\addtocounter{ypos}{\value{yspeed]

\ifnum\value{ypos}>100
\addtocounter{yspeed}{\value{ychange]
\else
\addtocounter{yspeed}{-\value{ychange]
\fi

\ifnum\value{numberofpages}>1 
\addtocounter{numberofpages}{-1}
\newpage
\drawstep
\fi
}

\begin{document}

\drawstep

\end{document}

(This was some test code I made when I considered making a flip-through animation to put in the corner of my Msc. thesis. Beats actually working on the thesis ;)
As it is, it generates 1000 pages, but combining it with another package and a bit of further programming, you can have the frames generated for each existing page on the background)

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 8^th, 2007, 3:51pm

towr, it generates the 1000 pages just fine, and virtually instantaneously. Holding page down I can see maybe 30 pages a second. I can tell that it is a dot tracing out some curve. If you click on the dot on the pdf page, it even takes the cursor in the tex page to the command where the dot is drawn. By exporting the page to pdf, I can view the animation clearly by holding page down; I don't see a way in BaKoMa for the pages to display one at a time instead of sequentially, so the pages don't stay in quite the same place between page turns (they shift down a bit), slightly garbling the animation.

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on May 9^th, 2007, 8:53pm

A little quirk in the BaKoMa editor is that pressing the backspace key while shift is held down does nothing, whereas in virtually every text editor that I am aware of, it will just do backspace as normal. Since you use the shift key a lot in TeX, and tend to make more miskeys than normal, this is quite annoying. Looking for a fix...

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Hippo on Dec 25^th, 2007, 2:05pm

Obob: I have looked to your paper ust to see formating ... the first thing I was doing when I saw LaTeX first time was to recode \newtheorem to allow slanted instead of built in italics in theorems ... but this is 18 yars ago ;) ... yes TeX is amazing, and WYSIWYG can be helpful ... actually I use TeX like a pipe very often and WYSIWYG will not help in this context. ... I very slowly migrate form \emtex to miktex ... and I am sure I plan to use TeX next 25 years. ... How will the MATHTYPE look like after say 3 years?

Title: Re: TeX => TeXmacs => back to TeX via BaKoMa
Post by Obob on Dec 28^th, 2007, 12:58pm

So long as mathtype is based on word, it is unlikely to look like tex any time in the near future. Once computers are powerful enough, it may become the case that standard word processors behave more like bakoma tex, in allowing both WYSIWYG and typesetting documents professionally. But the rather limited (or user-friendly) ability to do things like columns, insert spaces, etc. that are inherent in tex are likely to make the average person shy away from such a word processor. The thing is, to create a professional document, you really don't want much control over these aspects of document preparation, however.