
\chapter{Welcome to GNU TeXmacs}

\section{Where to find help}

The GNU \TeXmacs\ help is divided in the following parts:
\begin{itemize}
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{introduction} menu, you will find some basic and
        general explanations about how to use \TeXmacs.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{keyboard} menu, you will find help
        about how to use the keyboard in \TeXmacs's different modes.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{style} menu,
        the different \TeXmacs\ document styles are documented.
        You will also find out how to create your own styles and preambles.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{advanced} menu, we explain the more
        advanced features of {\TeXmacs}, such as the automatic
        generation of bibliographies or multifile projects.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{latex} menu,
        it is explained how to convert {\TeXmacs} files into {\LaTeX}
        and \emph{vice versa}. This is useful if you want to submit
        an article written using {\TeXmacs} to a journal.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{scheme} menu,
        you will find help on some of the internal behaviour of
        \TeXmacs\ and on the {\sc Guile Scheme} extension language,
        which enables you to write your own initialization
        files and to create your own menus.
  \item In the \submenu{Help}{interface} menu, you will find help on
        how to use \TeXmacs\ as an interface to an extern program,
        such a computer algebra system.
\end{itemize}

\section{About GNU TeXmacs}

The \TeXmacs\ program has been written for the following reasons:
\begin{itemize}
  \item In order to provide you with a free, easy to use and
        high quality what-you-see-is-what-you-get text editor.
        By ``high quality'' we mean that the printed output should
        be of the quality of what you can find in a book.
  \item In order to provide writers of computer algebra systems
        with a free powerful user interface, which can be dynamically
        linked with their system.
\end{itemize}

Notice that {\TeXmacs} is a ``structured text'' editor.
This means that we encourage you to write text with a logical meaning
rather than text which looks nice on the screen.
The advantage of this approach is that it makes it easier for you
to reuse your texts for other purposes. In particular,
mathematical formulas written using {\TeXmacs} are likely
to be fed into compute algebra systems.

Notice also that although {\TeXmacs} is free in price,
it has been protected by the ``GNU general public license''.
Roughly speaking, this license stipulates that {\TeXmacs} comes
WITHOUT ANY GUARANTEE and that {\TeXmacs} remains free,
even when it is incorporated in other pieces of software.

For more details about {\TeXmacs}, its authors,
the ``GNU general public license'',
its relation to the {\TeX} system,
its development and current defaults,
take a look at the menu \submenu{Help}{about}.
