[TxMt] A Newbie Introduction (nursing student)

[Jeff Schneiter]

Hello there,

I downloaded the trial version of TextMate 3 days ago and payed for  
it yesterday, am quite happy with what I have seen so far. One of the  
big selling points for me is that there is no toolbar! In the past I  
used Mellel and chose compact view to turn off the toolbar; I prefer  
the floating pallet. Toolbars are just way too distracting on the  
eyes, especially MS Word (a way too busy toolbar).

So as a nursing student (RN program in Seattle) I will start using  
TextMate and LaTeX to write my papers. One of my prereqs was English  
102 in which I had to write a 20 page paper with over 20 references,  
4 graphics, using MLA citations. I used Mellel without any type of  
bibliography software, and Mellel worked like a champ, quite good at  
setting styles; but I never worked with TOC or sections. I did have  
to spend extra time manipulating the text to eliminate widows/orphans  
and other layout issues. During the 2nd quarter of the program I had  
to write a 7 page paper using APA citations. For that one I used  
Apple's Pages and rolled my own references again. But first I used  
CopyWrite to write the paper before importing into Pages. I did not  
use fullscreen mode - don't like it. CopyWrite was really nice for  
organizing that paper, and plan on using it again.

This summer I have no classes, so I have spent time learning LaTeX  
and have converted the 7 page paper to LaTeX, using BibDesk and the  
apacite package. That was using TexShop. To make TextMate a little  
like TexShop I installed Schubert's PDF plugin, changed the pdflatex  
command to "Command-T" and created a bibtex command set to "Command- 
B". I copied latexErrWarnHtml.py into the local Latex.tmbundle (are  
there other mods I need to make?).

So I think I am set for next quarter's 15 page paper (on the cardiac  
and respiratory systems), and for the Masters program (whenever that  
may be).

Thanks for an excellent program for editing LaTeX.

Cheers,
Jeff