Hi list

I am using TextMate full time to write Latex and it's great, and improving. One thing I do not like is the CocoaDialog interface to insert \refs: too slow and clumsy. I (almost) can stand it for bibliography completion but \refs are too many, too similar to each other, and too frequently needed, so the dialog interrupts my workflow. So I started thinking and tinkering, but my coding skills are too poor (I also sent a msg to this list asking for help). Finally I think it is better to publish the idea and let the code wizards code it, if they like it. My feeling is that this could be the optimal way to insert references, even better than auctex's.

The idea is very simple: parse the tex file, write all labels (plus some surrounding text) into an auxiliary .lbl file, convert this into html, and replace each \label{...} command with an "a href" to a tiny javascript command that tells TextMate to insert the label's name into the source file. Finally, output to HTML. (Improvement: just search the labels matching a few characters, as it is now).

Do you see it? This produces an HTML window, with a list of all my labels, followed by the beginning lines of the equations (or section titles). More important, each label is clickable, and when I click on it, the reference gets inserted into the source file. I can keep the label window open, so no need to invoke the command over and over. When I add more equations, I just refresh the window as necessary.

But I got stuck with some stupid coding problems.

1- Easy to grep the tex file for lines containing a \label command plus some context. E.g. the following command outputs line number, plus the \label line, plus two nonempty lines following it:

sed -n -e "/\label/{=;N;N;G;p;}" | sed '/^$/d' | sed 's/^([0-9]+)$/\n\1/'

2- Easy to save all this info into a file fileName.lbl and do some rudimentary html-ization (just add <p></p>'s to separate the labels from each other- you can do much better I know, but this is fast)

3- Not so difficult to replace each "\label{...}" with the javascript link. But I got stuck when writing the osascript. Let me explain. Is is easy to create a link such that, when I click on it, TeXniscope is activated (e.g.):

<a href="javascript:TextMate.system('open -a TeXniscope', null);"> TeXniscope</a>

Nice! So I said, I'll just insert an osascript telling TextMate to insert the label reference:

<a href="javascript:TextMate.system("/ust/bin/osascript -e 'tell app "TextMate" to insert .......'", null);">\labe{...}</a>

(of course, "....." must be replaced in both places with the \label's name, using some bash, and some string must be joined etc etc) This doesn't work. Why?? even the simple

<a href="javascript:TextMate.system("/ust/bin/osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to activate'", null);">Finder</a>

does not work. This must be some escaping trickery. Could some pious wizard explain what's wrong? and even better, like the idea so much to code it? I do not think it should be hard (for you :).

Regards, Piero