Re: [TxMt] Summary/Plug for LaTeX in TextMate

Here's the link to the thread:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.macosx/21483

– Alex

On Dec 8, 2006, at 4:42 PM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

I recently sent an email to the MacTeX mailing list, in response to someone's question about what each editor for LateX has going for them. It is a long post talking about some of the major things in the bundle, so I thought it might be of interest/useful to some people in this list. Appended:

Haris

A lot of these things are documented in many places, so to begin with I will add some links to resources, and then will talk about some of the things it can do well, IMHO.

1. First and foremost, there are a number of screencasts I've done,

along with blog posts, a lot of them on the LaTeX bundle. They are here:

http://skiadas.dcostanet.net/afterthought/list-of-my-textmate-pages/

Also see here for more TextMate screencasts: http://macromates.com/ screencasts

2. The online TextMate manual is a key resource of information.

There you can learn about:

1. snippets (http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/

snippets#snippets). These are easy to create yourself for common repeatable code (and so much more). 2. project navigation (http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/ working_with_multiple_files#moving_between_files_with_grace) 3. Find and Replace in multiple files (option regexp included) (http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/ working_with_multiple_files#find_and_replace_in_projects) 4. Navigating within a single file (http://macromates.com/ textmate/manual/navigation_overview#navigation_overview) 5. Moving text (http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/ working_with_text#moving_text) 6. Setting up your preferred color arrangement via themes: (http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/themes#themes)

Now I'll talk about the LaTeX-specific commands in TextMate. I will not refer to their shortcuts, because you can set these to whatever you like, though they do have some reasonable defaults. You can see these commands using ctrl-esc and navigating into the LaTeX bundle. The help file for the bundle is here, in markdown format: (http:// macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Bundles/Latex.tmbundle/Support/ help.markdown). From within TextMate this can be accessed through the Bundle's help command.

Hm, perhaps I should explain what Bundles are very briefly. There is a core TextMate program, which offers the ability to extend it by creating Bundles, which are collections of rules, commands and preferences on how TextMate should act in particular languages. In some sense a lot of the power of TextMate is in these bundles. The bundles have a very open license (http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/ trunk/LICENSE), and are being maintained by a large group of volunteers. The list of languages supported is quite extensive (http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Bundles/). The success of TextMate is largely due to this power it provides to the bundle. It is easy for people to add functionality to TextMate, in a similar way as one would add functionality to emacs or vi, with the difference that it is a lot easier for "newbies" to add functionality.

Ok, on to the bundle then. First of all, you don't need any customizing to begin with. Dragging a LaTeX document onto the TextMate icon should just open it with TextMate and set you to LaTeX mode. To start a new document, you can use the Templates found under the file menu, or you can start from a scratch file. The moment you save the file with extension .tex, TextMate will recognize it as a LaTeX file and color it accordingly.

1. Now first of all, creating environments. TextMate has a command

called "Insert Environment Based On Current Word", triggered by command-{ (which is command-shift-[ in US keyboards, (command key=apple key)). You can even use this without a word and it will offer you a list of environments to insert. If you type in a word first, then TM creates an environment based on this word. For instance, typing "en" or "enum" and then the command trigger (cmd- {) will insert:

\begin{enumerate} \item \end{enumerate}

and place the caret right after the \item thing. When you are done with the first item, pressing Enter (fn-return on laptops) inserts a newline and a new \item entry. Similar behavior for "it", "item" for itemize etc. You can further customize this list to your heart's content by using the "Edit Configuration File" command in the LaTeX Bundle. For me a typical workflow these days is using the exam class. The "words" "q", "p" and "sol", followed by command-{, produce the "questions", "parts" and "solution" environments respectively.

2. There is a similar command for inserting common commands, called

"Insert Command Based On Current Word". This is triggered by command-}, and functions in a similar way. for instance "l" becomes "\lim_{}" with the caret inside the braces. Once you are done adding things there, pressing tab takes you out of the braces.

3. The LaTeX bundle offers context-sensitive completion, via the

common "esc" key. For instance, when typing a command, it will complete only with respect to commands, and not every word in the text. It will use any commands you have introduced before, as well as a stock list of commands. For instance typing "\dis" and pressing escape converts it to "\displaystyle". Typing "\di" and pressing escape multiple times cycles through all commands starting with \di.

On the other hand, if you are inside a \ref{}, then it completes with respect to all keys found in \label{} commands within the current document or any tex file included in your "root document" (called master document in TM). Similarly, inside a \cite {} it will offer completion with respect to all bibliography keys in your bib file and/or any \bibitem's in your document. Also, option-esc will offer you a popup of all completion matches, similar to the BibDesk completion plugin that BibDesk offers (though I think that plugin is a lot closer to XCode style completion, anyway...).

4. Image drag and drop. You can drag and drop any image into the

text, and an appropriate figure environment will be created, with the accompanying \includegraphics command. By pressing modifier keys, option or shift in this instance, you can adjust whether you want the entire figure environment, or just a simple \begin{center} \includegraphics...\end{center} thing, or the \includegraphics by itself. And these can to some extend be customized.

5. Table conversion. You can create a table by first typing the

entries into rows, with columns separated by tabs, like so:

one two three four five six

and select it and run a command, and it will become:

\begin{tabular}{ccc} \hline one & two & three\ \hline four & five & six\ \hline \end{tabular}

Similarly, you can create a new table with a prescribed number of rows and columns.

6. Wrapping things. You can tell TextMate to wrap the current

selection in a command. Suppose for instance you just typed the sentence "foo bar" and what to higlight it, so to include it in \emph. In TextMate, you would select it by pressing opt-left arrow twice, and then press ctrl-shift-w. This results in: "\emph{foo bar}" with the emph selected, so that you can type another command in its place. Pressing tab instead moves you past the closing }. There is a similar functionality for wrapping the selection in a begin-end environment pair.

7. Changing environments. Suppose you are inside a split

environment, and decide to change it to aligned. In TM, you would press ctrl-option-E, and then just type in the environment name, and both \begin and \end entries get fixed. Similarly, there is a command to toggle the presence of a * in the environment, like turning {equation} to {equation*} and back.

8. Project Outline command. I recently added this command. It

offers you an HTML, clickable outline of your project, much like a table of contents. Clicking on any section title takes you to the corresponding section.

9. Special Beamer setting. You can set the language grammar to

LaTeX Beamer, which causes some commands to have particular behavior related to beamer. For instance, the commands inserting a new \item also add an overlay specification to it.

10. You can quickly turn a list of of lines into an itemize or

enumerate environment, by selecting them and running the command ctrl-shift-L.

11. This is a general feature of TextMate that I found worth

mentioning, it's very useful. It has a columnar editing mode, where you can for instance select a bunch of lines and add the same text at the beginning of each line. For instance with the three lines:

foo bar baz

we could move the caret at the beginning of the first line, then shift-down twice, and then press option for columnar insertion. Now typing "\item " adds it to all three lines.

Ok, this is probably enough for now, but I would be happy to answer any other questions you have about TextMate. And you can usually find me in the irc channel, (irc://irc.freenode.net/#textmate). It is populated almost all the time by extremely helpful and great people (I would in fact say it is one of the great things TM has going for it).

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