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

[Charilaos Skiadas]

Hi Maarten,

    welcome aboard! I hope you like it and stay with us!

This might overlap with what Jacob said, but since I wrote it while  
offline I'll just send it along as is.

On Dec 2, 2006, at 8:50 AM, Maarten Sneep wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 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'm actively involved in the MacTeX effort, mainly for  
> testing, and I've written a set of Applescripts and shell scripts  
> for BBEdit to play nice with LaTeX. For these scripts I made sure  
> they play nice with the tricks TeXShop uses for multi-file  
> projects, since TeXShop is the standard entry-level application  
> that most will use when they start with (La)TeX on Mac OS X, and if  
> you're compatible with the starting point, you make it a lot easier  
> to upgrade to a serious editor.
>
> 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
> %:Marker
> %!TEX root = Document

By an odd coincidence, Kevin Ballard added yesterday support for %! 
TEX root, and some rudimentary support for %!TEX TS-program. To check  
that out, you will need to check out the subversion version of the  
bundle, which gets updated very frequently. Look at the TextMate  
manual [1] in the section “Getting More Bundles” for information how  
to set that up, and you can email the list with any problems (or even  
better, join us at the ##textmate IRC channel)

We actually already were doing a bit of sniffing of the file to  
detect which program should be used, for instance switching to latex 
+dvips in the presence of pstricks, or to xelatex in the presence of  
the xunicode or fontspec packages. But these settings will take  
precedence.

> 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).

That's actually not a bad idea, and should be easy to implement. I  
suppose you mean something like: If the caret is over the filename in  
\include{filename}, then to open filename for editing, or if the  
caret is over the image in \includegraphics{image}, to open the  
image. Or would you rather the command scans the entire line for any  
such relevant things, and offer you a popup if there are more than one?

Addendum: I just prepared such a command, and will be committing it  
shortly. Probably not perfect yet.

As far as encoding goes, TextMate always presents its commands with  
utf-8 data, taking care of trying to figure out the encoding of the  
original file as best it can, and keeping this transparent from the  
bundle items, which just act on utf-8 data. Allan has talked  
extensively on his views on the whole encoding issue [2]. Let us know  
of any particular problems you encounter.

Finally, the %: markers have been implemented for some time now I  
think, you should be seeing them in the symbol list, which you can  
see in the bottom right of the window, or you can bring it up via  
ctrl-shift-T.

Perhaps here I will take the opportunity to list the various  
resources on the workings of the LaTeX bundle, even though they are  
slightly out of date (and the mailing list archives offer for the  
moment more up to date info).

1. The built in LaTeX bundle help, which you can find by opening the  
bundle menu via ctrl-esc for instance, and navigating to LaTeX ->  
Help. Pressing the Help button on your keyboard (if you have such a  
button) while in a LaTeX file should have the same effect.
2. There are a number of screencasts and post on my blog: [3]

> I have a sample project that shows most of the issues, mail me off- 
> list if you are interested.

Please do send it to me.

Haris

[1] http://www.macromates.com/textmate/manual
[2] http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2005/09/18/handling-encodings- 
utf-8/
[3] http://skiadas.dcostanet.net/afterthought/list-of-my-textmate-pages/

> Regards,
>
> Maarten Sneep
>
> References:
> [1] http://www.nat.vu.nl/~sneep/tex/CompileTeX-BBEdit8.dmg
> [2] http://mactextoolbox.sourceforge.net/articles/japanese.html
>
> List of supported encodings in TeXShop. There is one item to take  
> care of in editing TeX sources for Japanese users. The details for  
> that can be found at [2].
>
> MacOSRoman, IsoLatin, IsoLatin2, IsoLatin5, MacJapanese,  
> DOSJapanese, SJIS_X0213, EUC_JP, JISJapanese, MacKorean, UTF-8  
> Unicode, Standard Unicode, Mac Cyrillic, DOS Cyrillic, DOS Russian,  
> Windows Cyrillic, KOI8_R, Mac Chinese Traditional, Mac Chinese  
> Simplified, DOS Chinese Traditional, DOS Chinese Simplified, GBK,  
> GB 2312, GB 18030.