[TxMt] Re: LaTeX: feature suggestions for the LaTeX bundle.

[Jacob Rus]

Maarten Sneep wrote:
> This is my first post to this list. I've been a user of BBEdit for many 
> years, and out of curiosity I've decided to check out TextMate. [...]
> 
> I must say that I like what I've seen so far, but I have some suggestions:

Well first, welcome.  I hope you stick around!

> Textmate runs either the current file or a file pointed to in some 
> environment variable. I guess there is an easy way to set this variable, 
> but TeXShop uses a method that is not all that hard to implement; I did 
> so for some BBEdit AppleScripts [1]. The core is actually implemented in 
> a (rather ugly) shell script, you may be able to reuse parts of the script.
> 
> TeXShop defines some meta comments, describing the source, and how it 
> can be typeset. From the help-files:
> 
> %!TEX TS-program = command [...]
> %!TEX encoding = encoding [...]
> %!TEX root = Document

Interestingly, the following patch was checked into the TextMate bundles 
subversion repository about 7 hours ago:

[SVN] r6277 (Latex); from Kevin Ballard
> [NEW] LaTeX now supports master files defined by the TeXShop convention %!TEX root = file
> It also observes %!TEX TS-program = progname, but at the moment it only cares if progname == xelatex
> Deleting aux files also observes this way of setting master files
> 
> Changed:
> U   trunk/Bundles/Latex.tmbundle/Commands/LaTeX and view.plist
> U   trunk/Bundles/Latex.tmbundle/Commands/Trash aux Files.plist
> A   trunk/Bundles/Latex.tmbundle/Support/lib/options.sh

So it seems that much of what you are looking for is on the way.  But as 
for encoding, TextMate really prefers UTF-8 for everything, so I'm not 
sure whether things will necessarily be made easier for other encodings.

> It would be useful to have a "open selection" command that opens a 
> referenced file, and an open master command. I have some of those in my 
> scripts in my bundle [1], for regular tex files, and graphics files 
> (either open the original metapost source, of open the graphic in 
> preview or so).

How exactly does this work?  There are similar commands in a few bundles 
(I dunno about LaTeX), and you can make TextMate commands pretty 
flexibly, so I imagine you'll be able to get this to work without much 
effort.

I imagine Haris and others can answer your questions better than I can. 
  Again, welcome.

Cheers,
Jacob Rus