Hi Rob,

Thanks for your advice for using the shortcuts. However, they are not really what is desirable here. The issue is not with the movement of the cursor (caret), but with its visibility.

The situation is that I am writing a bigger thesis in LaTeX, sending it for review to various reviewers. On a 2-monitor setting I check the comments on monitor #1, and I do the work on monitor #2. Due to the agreed review process with my reviewers, I often have to switch (⌘+Tab) between TM2 and MS Word windows (accepting comments and track changes).

You can imagine that the comments are here and there in the text, and it is really hard to find the actual location of the cursor on the screen. It is therefore harder to move the cursor with keyboard arrows (not mouse), focus on the actual writing/correcting, instead of searching for the vertical bar cursor.

Is it that hard to introduce this feature as an option to TM2? It was there in TM1. Call it an accessibility request.

Trust me, many LaTeX users (PhD and MSc students, writers, reviewers, etc.) will welcome this feature. I consider TM2 as a professional text editor, and I do not see the reason not having this feature as an option in the software. All the competitor text editors have this feature (at least as a plugin).

I do not have any expertise in coding, anyway I would have forked the source of TM2 for my needs already. Instead of convincing me that nobody needs this feature can somebody, please, introduce the code to the source of TM2. The silent masses behind TM2 will be extremely grateful. I will be one of them. :-)

Kind regards,

Peter

On 17 Jul 2015, at 15:18 pm, Rob McBroom mailinglist0@skurfer.com wrote:

On 16 Jul 2015, at 14:08, Novitzky Peter wrote:

...

I was wondering, would any of you prefer sometimes using square/block carets instead of the vertical bar? I work on 2 monitors, reading on 1st, writing on 2nd. Often I have issues to find the location of the caret/cursor.

This is super-upsetting if you are writing your thesis (yes I use LaTeX), however, instead of typing the great idea/phrase you end up looking for a caret/cursor.

One quick way to find the cursor is to just hold Shift and hit ↑ or ↓ a couple of times. That will highlight entire lines and make the location pretty obvious.

There are also TextMate-only things like ⌃⌥P. You could probably make a macro that selects and deselects something, causing it to flash.

But really, if you’re about to type something it seems like “Where do I want the cursor?” matters more than “Where is it now?”.

-- Rob McBroom http://www.skurfer.com/

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

So far I coloured the vertical bar caret with a contrast colour against the background, but even this is not ideal. Especially if the window loses focus...

Thanks though for the suggestions. I appreciate it a lot.

Patience is the art of hoping. ;)

Peter

On 17 Jul 2015, at 16:37 pm, Rob McBroom mailinglist0@skurfer.com wrote:

On 17 Jul 2015, at 10:47, Novitzky Peter wrote:

...

Thanks for your advice for using the shortcuts. However, they are not really what is desirable here.

I know what you ultimately want. I don’t know if you’ll get it next week, or never.

I was just offering suggestions for things you can do today.

-- Rob McBroom http://www.skurfer.com/

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

Hi Rasmus,

On 17 Jul 2015, at 21:05 , Rasmus Malver rasmus@malver.dk wrote:

Hi guys,

You inspired me to use TextMate for LaTeX, but I quickly stumbled into known problems that have been discussed here since 2007. First I needed kpsewhich. So I installed the newest lightweight MacTeX from tug.org. Now TextMate can Typeset & View (PDF), but not Watch Document. The prompt is Error: Failed to compile document. Screenshot attached.

actually we expect that you use the standard (full installer) of MacTeX. It looks like the MacTeX version you installed does not include `latexmk` — the tool “Watch Document” uses to translate a file. That's why you get the error code 127 which states that the command `latexmk` was not found on your system. My current plan is to add `latexmk` to the list of required commands for “Wach Document”. This means that TextMate will show an easier to interpret error message, if it did not find `latexmk` on a system, in the future.

The most recent guide to using TextMate for LaTeX I can find is from 2010, and it talks a lot about “things to come”. Is there anything newer?

The help document should be a good starting point. Just click on the menu Bundles→LaTeX→Help.

E.g. for TextMate 2 on Yosemite :-)

Hope I could help. If you have any additional questions, then please feel free to ask.

Cheers, Rasmus

Kind regards, René

Hi Graham,

Many thanks for the suggestion on the blinking frequency. Actually I am quite happy with the frequency in Terminal and other apps. It seems the frequency can be set in TM2 too, in textmate/Frameworks/OakAppKit/src/NSEvent Additions.mm by NSTextInsertionPointBlinkPeriod.

I found the colour for changing the line highlight, but as you said, it is not functional yet. Although it depends how the line highlight will be implemented, it does not really solve my problem: it will still be hard to see where on the actual line the cursor is.

From all the possible options changing the vertical line bar to block caret is still the simplest and most straightforward way.

All I found, if somebody finds it helpful, is this page at the Apple Developer site:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Applic...:

As much as I understand it, the change should be called with the - (void)drawInsertionPointInRect:(NSRect)aRect with all its options. Just in case somebody finds this helpful for the commit...

As stated on the page link: http://superuser.com/questions/429464/change-the-width-and-color-of-mac-os-x...

"The reason is that the cursor is set by the application itself. There's no "system-wide text cursor" apart from the defaults that most applications inherit. [...] Application developers can change the way the cursor looks in a typical NSTextView by overriding its defaults (drawInsertionPointInRect and setInsertionPointColor) at the current insertion point."

Kind regards,

Peter

On 18 Jul 2015, at 00:34 am, Graham Heath graham.p.heath@gmail.com wrote:

Would it be enough to increase the frequency of the blinking of the caret. Seems to me that a frenetically blinking cursor would be more easily seen.

Though TextMate doesn't respect the following system settings, maybe it should? defaults write -g NSTextInsertionPointBlinkPeriodOff -float 0.1 defaults write -g NSTextInsertionPointBlinkPeriodOn -float 0.1

This comes from the following SuperUser post, which is actually about disabling the blinking, but seemed relevant any way.

http://superuser.com/questions/466660/how-to-disable-blinking-caret-when-edi...

Also some of this issue could be helped by, yet another, request for the "highlight current line" feature.

Thanks,

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Novitzky Peter pnovitzky@gmail.com wrote: So far I coloured the vertical bar caret with a contrast colour against the background, but even this is not ideal. Especially if the window loses focus...

Thanks though for the suggestions. I appreciate it a lot.

Patience is the art of hoping. ;)

Peter

On 17 Jul 2015, at 16:37 pm, Rob McBroom mailinglist0@skurfer.com wrote:

...

On 17 Jul 2015, at 10:47, Novitzky Peter wrote:

...

Thanks for your advice for using the shortcuts. However, they are not really what is desirable here.

I know what you ultimately want. I don’t know if you’ll get it next week, or never.

I was just offering suggestions for things you can do today.

-- Rob McBroom http://www.skurfer.com/

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

--

Graham P Heath

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

Hi Ronald,

Many thanks for your input, you seem to be much more familiar with the code than I am. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to use XCode and compile sources.

Any possibility of introducing this in the next version of TM2

a) either as a switch in the TM2 Preferences, b) or as setting in terminal through "defaults write ..." command?

Kind regards,

Peter

On 18 Jul 2015, at 16:59 pm, Ronald Wampler rdwampler@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Novitzky Peter pnovitzky@gmail.com wrote:

...

From all the possible options changing the vertical line bar to block caret is still the simplest and most straightforward way.

All I found, if somebody finds it helpful, is this page at the Apple Developer site:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Applic...:

As much as I understand it, the change should be called with the - (void)drawInsertionPointInRect:(NSRect)aRect with all its options. Just in case somebody finds this helpful for the commit...

For various reasons, TextMate uses a custom text view, which is not a subclass of NSTextView, so the above solution is not applicable. The relevant part of the code base to change the rendering of the caret is here:

https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Frameworks/layout/src/layou...

If you are comfortable downloading the source and compiling it, you can change the above line to something like:

res.push_back(OakRectMake(r1.origin.x, r1.origin.y, _metrics->column_width(), r1.size.height));

I have not fully test it, so I don't know if it's the ideal solution. Also, you might want to change the caret color to be somewhat transparent in whatever theme you are using. To get it upstream, it would have to be hidden and "themeable" in some way I imagine, which would be more involved.

...

Peter

On 18 Jul 2015, at 00:34 am, Graham Heath graham.p.heath@gmail.com wrote:

...

Would it be enough to increase the frequency of the blinking of the caret. Seems to me that a frenetically blinking cursor would be more easily seen.

Though TextMate doesn't respect the following system settings, maybe it should? defaults write -g NSTextInsertionPointBlinkPeriodOff -float 0.1 defaults write -g NSTextInsertionPointBlinkPeriodOn -float 0.1

This comes from the following SuperUser post, which is actually about disabling the blinking, but seemed relevant any way.

http://superuser.com/questions/466660/how-to-disable-blinking-caret-when-edi...

Also some of this issue could be helped by, yet another, request for the "highlight current line" feature.

Thanks,

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Novitzky Peter pnovitzky@gmail.com wrote: So far I coloured the vertical bar caret with a contrast colour against the background, but even this is not ideal. Especially if the window loses focus...

Thanks though for the suggestions. I appreciate it a lot.

Patience is the art of hoping. ;)

Peter

On 17 Jul 2015, at 16:37 pm, Rob McBroom mailinglist0@skurfer.com wrote:

...

On 17 Jul 2015, at 10:47, Novitzky Peter wrote:

...

Thanks for your advice for using the shortcuts. However, they are not really what is desirable here.

I know what you ultimately want. I don’t know if you’ll get it next week, or never.

I was just offering suggestions for things you can do today.

-- Rob McBroom http://www.skurfer.com/

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

--

Graham P Heath

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your contribution on this issue. I tested it, 1st with the repeat 3x, which worked fine.

However, when I test it with the endless repeat, TM2 even my i7 CPU is becoming sluggish, not to mention that after few lines the highlight is starting to behave strangely (esp. at the end of the lines).

When I test this script on a file with 240 lines of text, cca. 23.000 words, the work with TM2 becomes super slow ... :-/

Conclusion: the block caret in the source of TM2 is still preferable ... Thanks though for trying to help. I appreciate it a lot!

Kind regards,

Peter

On 20 Jul 2015, at 17:44 pm, Matt Neuburg matt@tidbits.com wrote:

This thread has inspired me to experiment with manually going like this:

Shift-Left Arrow Right Arrow Shift-Left Arrow Right Arrow

... Repeat as necessary. The effect is exactly the same as a blinking block cursor.

Now, how to automate that? Unfortunately, I don't think a TextMate macro can include a "delay" or "sleep" command. But AppleScript can!

tell application "TextMate" to activate tell application "System Events" tell application process "TextMate" delay 1 repeat 3 times key code 123 using shift down do shell script "sleep 0.5" key code 124 do shell script "sleep 0.5" end repeat end tell end tell

It's easy to trigger that with, say, a keyboard shortcut, and so the problem is effectively solved. m.

...

On Jul 18, 2015, at 10:28 AM, Novitzky Peter pnovitzky@gmail.com wrote:

Any possibility of introducing this in the next version of TM2

a) either as a switch in the TM2 Preferences, b) or as setting in terminal through "defaults write ..." command?

-- matt neuburg, phd = http://www.apeth.net/matt/ pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei Programming iOS 8! http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034261.do iOS 8 Fundamentals! http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034278.do RubyFrontier! http://www.apeth.com/RubyFrontierDocs/default.html

---

textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate