Idea: TeXmacs as an alternative to Foam for taking notes

See this: https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

Our gsoc student is working on the markdown converter. Let’s have a markdown converter first.

I don’t mean to suggest that you import/export Foam but rather to have a TeXmacs feature that works like this for taking notes.

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Maybe the WebAssembly technology can be used to port TeXmacs to web. Then it can cooperate with something like Foam.

But what does it means something like Foam? I gave 10 min look but I do not see which features you find worthwhile to copy? We have already hyperlinking of texmacs documents (see the Help pages). You can already use them to organise your knowledge. You want the automatic list on the left pane of Foam? Or the graphs? Which are the features in Foam that are useful or distracting? I think some more insights would be useful to have a meaningful discussion.

TeXmacs cannot be ported to WebAsm until one is able to port Guile or a reasonable replacement. This seems already a non-trivial task. Also we depend on freetype, but maybe this would be easier.

See this video on Roam (which is what Foam is inspired by):

https://youtu.be/vxOffM_tVHI

I will when I got some time, thanks. But this will not help me to understand which features you find useful and which not. I imagine that you do not want to have separate code and preview windows … :slight_smile: Can you summarise two/three features that could be implemented in a TeXmacs style (or UI)? That would help to carry this discussion forward.

This could make sense as one of the modes if both windows are editable and kept automatically “in sync” (in other words the preview window is not a preview, but it is the usual editing window).
One way in which it would be useful is making empty environments evident (sometimes an empty environment remains after deleting its content and one does not notice it).

I think what’s important is the idea that TeXmacs can be used to take notes and that maybe many people would want to do this even if they don’t plan to use it to submit research papers to conferences/journals.

So maybe this usage should be explicit in the GUI, to guide users to try out using TeXmacs to take notes.

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I understand the rough picture, but I do not think advertisement would suffice. If we want to explore the direction to make TeXmacs more suitable for note taking, I think we need first somebody who really uses it in this way and is competent enough to customize TeXmacs in order to facilitate this kind of workflows. This could take the form of a new style with associated UI elements to work easily with tags and outlines, etc… I do not know personally anybody who is trying to use TeXmacs is this way, but it is certainly possible that a enlightened user help in this direction. I think all the necessary functionalities can be implemented via the standard customisation mechanisms that are already there. Just some work, patience and dedication is needed.

Personally I’m writing some notes on the blog on how to create UI dialogs and how certain features of TeXmacs can be accessed from scheme and from macros. Then I would like to have some more beamer themes, since presentations are one of my frequent use cases for TeXmacs. I think we all can contribute as we can to improve the program in many ways and some day maybe somebody will also write a note-taking style :slight_smile:

Do you want me to put this kind of project in the wishlist? Would you like to prepare a small description of the essential functionalities which you think would be good to implement, maybe with a mock up document (i.e. how a typical document could look like?)

Although I use TeXmacs for taking notes, I am not an expert in note taking apps. Perhaps there are people on this forum who are more knowledgeable of what makes a great note taking app in terms of essential features and user interface?

Yes, it would be useful to find somebody interested in using the kind of features we would like to add. Otherwise it is like aiming in the dark.