Comment by o_syn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by o_syn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

On an unrelated note, why haven't there been any more modal editors?

For example, you could enter a "bold formatting" mode, where you could say type "fun" and it results in "𝐟𝐮𝐧". All these are Unicode characters, so you wouldn't need a separate document format like Word.

Presumably one can have a "math" mode where you could type math like you would type regular text obviating the dollar signs and backslashes in LaTeX.

As I understand it, LaTeX has an incredibly complicated architecture with multiple layers of macros before the lowest layer of TeX primitives. You could replace all that with Unicode symbols.

In math mode you could type "in" and get the Unicode symbol "∊". Then you would be able to copy-paste math and send it over email, instant messaging et cetera, and easily type it with a WYSIWYG editor using a traditional keyboard. Of course, there would be numerous problems with typesetting integration limits, fractions et cetera but I think these can be solved using Unicode and clever programming.

I currently do not solve say Group Theory problems on my computer because LaTeX is way too inconvenient.

I think on a hypothetical editor with a math "mode", one could touch-type math. Maybe I'm missing something and there are insurmountable obstacles to implementing such a solution. If so, I would be happy if someone could point out what they are.

Having different modes seems like a very powerful feature, and I'm just surprised the last editor using modes was written 40 years ago.

What you're describing is an interesting idea and LyX is sort of like that. Mathematica also works pretty similarly, it has different ways of representing and entering equivalent expressions visually (e.g., TraditionalForm or DisplayForm). You can switch modes for a particular cell and the underlying meaning is preserved. There's also a special escape sequence for entering symbols and a lot of symbols have an equivalence with their obvious operators, for instance "x ∈ X" is equivalent to "Element[x, X]".

That said, it's really awful at copy-pasting into other programs my experience. But it does a decent job of exporting explicitly, like for instance with TeXForm.

Also, a slightly different thing you can do in Vim is to use the conceal feature to visually "collapse" LaTeX escapes into their unicode characters. For example, the document says "\lambda", but it will display as λ (unless you position the cursor on the same line, so that you can edit it). I find it helps reduce visual clutter a bit.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4626

There are no insurmountable obstacles to what you are asking. At least none that I can see now, but I do see some things that wouldn't be convenient.

First, when using other commands one should be able to input in bold as well. For instance, while searching. Otherwise, one wouldn't be able to search for the bold version since it is encoded differently.

Second, search and other commands should be aware that "f" and "𝐟" represent the same letter. Otherwise, each search becomes a game of trying all the styles to see what gets results.

Third, and this is a matter of taste, I prefer to keep the presentation separated from the structure as much as possible. I much rather write \myStyle{fun} and keep writing. Later, when the writing part is done, I can define \myStyle as bold or whatever makes sense.

Take a look at LyX.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com