[TxMt] Re: C Library bundle MONSTER

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Dec 7, 2006, at 2:24 PM, William D. Neumann wrote:

> Which has its disadvantages over the snippet solution as well as  
> its advantages.  Let's say you want to insert one a union symbol,  
> but you can't remember the latex name for the symbol... What's  
> easier, going into menus that take you along, say, math symbols ->  
> set symbols -> Union (bigcup), or selecting Edit configuration  
> file, looking for the symbol section, then reading through them  
> until you find what looks right?

Actually I was not referring to the cmd-\ command, the one for  
generating symbols. This is indeed very counterintuitive atm, and  
should be done better. I am not using it myself at all, which is one  
of the reasons it is in the state it is. But now you reminded me of  
it, which means it will get better soon.

The cmd-\ stuff is actually supposed to follow a certain logic, that  
unfortunately did not made it to the help file, because I had  
completely forgotten the command even existed. The logic is:
one letter + cmd-\   --->  command for a Greek letter
two letters + cmd-\  ---> cycle among the various symbol commands  
starting with those letters, with a few marked exceptions, namely BT,  
BH, BQ, BZ etc generate \\mathbb{...}
three letters + cmd-\ ---> cycle through appropriate arrow commands,  
like "dar" is for down arrows, "har" is for harpoons etc.

This should definitely be made more clear in the documentation. And  
this is absolutely not the command I was referring to as an example  
of what to do.

I was in fact referring to the "Insert Environment Based On Current  
Word" and "Insert Command Based On Current Word" commands, which are  
much closer to a code completion thing. Completing a single word does  
not qualify as code completion in my book, we can do that with the  
standard word completion mechanism in existence just fine (try for  
instance to type "\dia" followed by pressing esc, or "\big" followed  
by esc. Much better than the cmd-\ stuff in many ways.)

But my point was simply that there are exactly two reasons that I can  
think of for the presence of the bundle. The one is locating a  
command without knowing its name, and for that a single "smart topic  
search" command, with an appropriate accompanying file, is much  
better. The other is code completion, and for that a single 10 line  
(20 if you want smart behavior) script with an accompanying data file  
is also much better. This bundle is the wrong tool for the job.

Haris