texwork (was Re: [OS X TeX] synctex)

[William Adams]

On Jul 11, 2008, at 12:50 PM, Richard Koch wrote:

> On Jul 11, 2008, at 8:28 AM, William Adams wrote:
>
>> \begin{historicnitpicking}
>>
>> To be fair, I think it'd be nice to mention that TeXshop in turn  
>> was inspired by TeXview.app on NeXTstep....
>>
>> \end{historicnitpicking}
>
> Thanks for adding this historical note, which is correct. It may  
> matter only to those few of us who had NeXT machines.

I still think it's important from an historical accuracy / perspective  
angle.

>> Actually, have you considered just taking TeXshop and making it  
>> compile w/ GNUstep? That'd get one running on Windows and Linux and  
>> Mac OS X would ``just work''.
>
> I think that would be a nightmare; you'd get a program which "sorta,  
> kinda worked." When you see what Jonathan has actually produced,  
> you'll be amazed.


I dunno, NovaMind is actually using GNUstep to distribute their  
commercial mind-mapping application on Windows --- I know this mostly  
reflect my irritation at not getting ``Yellow Box for Windows'' and  
losing PasteUp.app, and FreeHand not switching back to being a Cocoa  
app &c., but it seems a lot of redundant work to code a new  
application which mostly re-creates what one would get ``for free'' w/  
the *step frameworks.

n Jul 11, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> But TeXview drew inspiration from Textures on the Mac, isn't it?  
> Textures, if I'm not mistaken, was a project launched by Addison- 
> Wesley which finally was released independently, by Blue Sky  
> Research (then Barry Smith and Doug Henderson) in 1986.
>
> It was made easier by the fact the Mac was programmed in Pascal at  
> the time, and Don Knuth's web, the language TeX was originally  
> programmed in, was a dialect of Pascal.
>
> I think I read a text mentioning this history somewhere, maybe by  
> Nelson Beebe.

This is a good example of why it's important to get the history correct.

There was a lot of cross-pollination in this timeframe --- sorting it  
out would require more than just cursory searching (I'm seeing a  
usenet post on Textures 1.2 from 23 Mar 1990, but a post on TeXview  
1.0 from 5 Oct 1989) --- I'm almost certain Textures was available  
first though. Searching on ``Beebe Textures Teview'' yielded TUGboat  
Volume 14, Number 2, July 1993 which mentioned both in different  
articles (mental note, must dig out archive of TUGboat and transfer  
over to pen slate).

On Jul 13, 2008, at 8:28 PM, Joseph C. Slater PE, PhD wrote:

> On Jul 13, 2008, at 4:13 PM, Louis Talman wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 11, 2008, at 10:50 AM, Richard Koch wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for adding this historical note, which is correct. It may  
>>> matter only to those few of us who had NeXT machines.
>>
>> ...and still mourn their departure.
>
>
> Next isn't completely gone:

Yeah, but they keep taking stuff away, like the input hack that let  
one have a top-level Services menu in Cocoa apps, and of course  
vertical menus, and the pop-up main menu which allowed certain  
commands (punch in Altsys Virtuoso) to be gestural.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications