TeXmacs isn't based on TeX but nonetheless produces documents of similar quality.
But I thought it does use the TeX engine under the hood for typesetting? I figured it's a WYSIWYG frontend that maps some sort of internal representation to a TeX output and throws it at TeX in the end, with its own LaTeX-type ideas for higher organization?
That actually makes me much more interested in TeXmacs, since an independent implementation puts it at the same level as something like SILE (with a very different user interface story, of course). Now I'm quite curious to check it out to see what kind of quality I could get out of it.
Looks like the naming is a topic for discussion in the community: http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/why-some-people-get-upset-when-the...