Do many people use TeXmacs? Now that you can export markdown and org-mode to LaTeX, TeXmacs doesn’t seem to provide much value. I use org-mode with embedded LaTeX for many documents and it works really well for standard stuff. You still are probably going to want to use LaTeX (or even just TeX) for complex documents like resumes and the like though.
I’ve tried using TeXmacs once and it never really worked well. Maybe because I already can write LaTeX reasonably quickly, but using it always felt slow and clunky.
Just as a data point, I used to take notes in class with this software (essentially blackboard after blackboard of math expressions). It is possible to type extremely fast with it and thanks to copy/paste/modify you can actually go faster than the lecturer. The wysiwym display is also critical to check for transcription mistakes in real time.
I was also using the software to do my own derivations. My handwriting is pretty bad so I actually preferred that to using a physical notebook.
Finally I did the typesetting of my whole PhD thesis with it. I had to split it in multiple files because at the type it would be very slow on very long and complex document but apart from that the result looked very nice.
As an aside, and this is just personal opinion, I always felt the love of latex in the scientific community is some sort of Stockholm syndrome. There is no arguing about the fact that latex is better than word for any serious writing and that the output is normally beautiful (if one chooses the right style, probably CV are the common exception) but the input method (let alone the conglomerate of tools/libraries around it) can be greatly improved. If latex notation is so good why then nobody uses it to write math on a blackboard? :) Texmacs (and lyx ) really bring something new to the table. What I think still remains to be solved is the topping to create new templates, right now it is a bit like working with raw css/html. I’m pretty sure something more intuitive could be built, something like the developer tools of chrome would already help.
Some people are using TeXmacs. But the number of the TeXmacs users are increasing.
> Now that you can export markdown and org-mode to LaTeX, TeXmacs doesn’t seem to provide much value.
This is not a difficult but a trivial task. Currently, TeXmacs documents can be converted to LaTeX. Some people use TeXmacs to write the draft of a paper and then polish it using LaTeX.
> I’ve tried using TeXmacs once and it never really worked well.
You may try it again. We have added plenty of features and fixed many bugs.
I think the point is another: TeXmacs is a structured editor so you work a bit differently wrt to a standard ASCII editor and if you try to force your previous workflow on it it will feel clumsy. Is a radically different sofware which requires some time to be understood and appreciated (I know because it happened to me). Give it a try when you have some time to spend. Working in a WYSIWYG environment, especially when doing math, means that you can really do things differently, for example do computations or research direclty on the screen, or take directly notes from a seminar in a form which will be as good as it can get. I'm an experienced LaTeX user and currently I touch LaTeX code only when I have to send document to editors for typesetting.
I have co-authored several academic articles in Org mode with exporting to LaTeX. The main reasons for choosing Org were that (i) we wanted to include the analysis code, table generation and figures in the same file as the manuscript, and (ii) the workflow was Emacs-centric. The Org markup was simple, readily allowed for inserting most LaTeX, had nice tables, but was fiddly for some more complex tasks. I recently needed to convert one of the manuscripts from Org to Word - pandoc was very helpful.
We could possibly have used TeXmacs, R markdown (especially with RStudio), some variant of noweb, or even Jupyter with conversion to LaTeX using pandoc.
I’ve tried using TeXmacs once and it never really worked well. Maybe because I already can write LaTeX reasonably quickly, but using it always felt slow and clunky.