GNU Texmacs

GNU TeXmacs just dropped into the chat: a free, what‑you‑see‑is‑what‑you‑get editor for math‑heavy, professional‑looking docs. It handles text, equations, graphics, even slides, talks to math tools, exports to PDF, and runs on Mac/Windows/Linux. It’s extensible with Scheme (a programming language), and yes, it can convert to LaTeX and HTML. But here’s the twist that lit the thread: it’s not based on LaTeX—despite the name.

That name became the battlefield. One user side‑eyed, “I wonder why they chose that name,” while another called it a “weird project” with a “weird name that sets… wrong expectations.” The practicality crowd piled on: a long‑timer in academia claimed they’ve never seen a real‑world TeXmacs user, arguing that LaTeX (especially via Overleaf) already does the job. On the other side, a lone superfan cheered, “I love TeXmacs so much I just use it as a regular word processor,” turning the thread into a cult‑classic vs. mainstream showdown. Then a curveball: someone shared a try‑it‑now browser build from a fork called Mogan with better East Asian text support — check it out here. A few nerdy asides compared it to Emacs because of its scripting vibe, but the big drama stayed the same: Is TeXmacs a hidden gem with a branding problem, or a niche tool no one asked for?