Hi all,

I was contemplating the fact that Latex 2 requires a separate templates directory, rather than having a stock set within the bundle itself. On the one hand, I appreciate the ability to add my own templates in this directory, but the ruby directives aren’t applied upon import, a nice feature of the original Latex bundle’s internal templates, and this means extra typing. Am I doing something clueless once  again?

I also find the template window itself that opens under Latex 2 to be a bit of a tease: it doesn’t work quite as advertised in the Help file. When I hit return I get to edit the template name, but I can’t seem to find a keyboard sequence out of this mode (no ‘reasonable’ emacs/readline sequence works, other than tabbing me into the template preview window, where I can edit the template) and I have to use the mouse to insert the selected template. [I’m running Snow Leopard on my powerbook, Leopard on my iMac]. I like my mouse, but not that much. :)

What would be nice is to have a stock set of templates in the bundle, and then such a window that allows one to create a new template by using or even modifying [but not replacing] one of the ones already stored in the template inventory list; of course, the user-defined/modified templates would have to be set aside as is currently required. But hey this is Textmate,  there must be a macro/script that can be developed for doing this (not that anyone needs more work!)?  And wouldn’t it be nice that the template editor have all the power of textmate and the latex2 bundle at the ready, to ease the template modification?

Now, Latex 2 does indeed have some major improvements over the first bundle. But the templates feature seems a step backward in my opinion (or aging is getting to my brain?). Thanks for listening.

Best wishes
David

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David F. Snyder, Ph.D.
Department of Mathematics
Texas State University at San Marcos