[TxMt] Regarding the LaTeX bundle

[Daniel Käsmayr]

Dear Haris, Allan, Max and all the LaTeX-ed Maters out there…

now that I have finished almost my whole thesis (I am a chemist) with  
TextMate and the LaTeX bundle, as well as having another larger LaTeX  
project ahead of me, I would like to offer some feedback as well. I  
am not sure I would have enjoyed writing thousand of lines of text in  
LaTeX  without the usefulness of TM or the bundle… so first of all  
many thanks to Allan and everyone involved!

Am 10. Sep 2006 um 05:12 schrieb Charilaos Skiadas:

> On Sep 9, 2006, at 6:40 PM, Max Lein wrote:
>>
>> (i) No known command list: suggestion: type command: text stays  
>> grayish-blue until a command is recognized. Then the text turns  
>> dark blue. Basically there should be user feedback whenever a  
>> command is recognized.
>>
>> I can provide you with a list of `official' LaTeX commands if needed.

a very good idea, but I would like to have two such lists. One for  
the official commands, and another one for bundle commands (possibly  
including the most used ones) that is also user configurable, maybe  
via a TM_LATEX_BLABLA variable? As an example: I have used glosstex  
and there are quite a bit of possibly commands coming with it (as  
mentioned previously on the list where I posted a snippet of my  
personal flavor of the latex.grammar). Also I would love to have my  
custom commands as defined in my preamble color-coded, but thos would  
either have to be parsed by a script or added manually to the  
"second" list.

>> (iii) Footnotes and marginpars should be marked within the text;  
>> perhaps the footnote's/marginpar's text could even be folded (not  
>> sure if automatic foldmark recognition works on a bundle level).
>
> allan: (iii) marking: yes, folding: we can’t do w/o having the  
> braces align
>
> me: The text in the footnote gets a scope of meta.footnote.latex
> So if you add that scope to your coloring theme and add some color  
> to it, you'll get highlighted footnotes. Not immediately possible  
> for marginpars, but we are thinking of matching those as well and  
> giving them some scope extending both footnotes and marginpars, so  
> that you could color both of them at the same time.
>
> Update: marginpars are now matched with scope  
> meta.paragraph.marginpar.latex, so you can color them as you like.

Folding: I have toyed with changing my snippets for the headings to  
include a commented line corresponding to the heading and then have  
TM fold over the two, such as:

\section{section name}\label{sec:sectionname}

%endsection

This works when the grammar contains the correct folding start- and  
stop- markers.

Footnote coloring was one of the first things I added to my  
tmTheme ;) If we added a snippet "fn" that created a footnote  
beginning on a new line and provided some help for folding I believe  
this would do as well, not?

>> (iv) Use input instead of include when dragging a .tex document  
>> into another: afaik include is deprecated and input is preferred  
>> instead. You cannot `include' some bundles for instance (diagxy  
>> comes to mind), you have to use input instead.

(…)

> Of course, you can easily change this in your own copy, by opening  
> the bundle editor and finding the appropriate drag command. All you  
> have to do is change the \\\\include that appears there to \\\\input.

Or set a TM_VARIABLE? I am always a bit careful about changing the  
predefined bundles - you do lose any upcoming updates, although one  
could expect no major changes at a certain level of maturity of the  
bundle. But debugging things will become quite difficult… or have I  
missed an important change in the way things are handled?

>> (vi) Inline formulas should have a grayish background so it's  
>> easier to see where formulas begin and where they end. (This one  
>> is also important to me.)
>
> allan: (vi) that’d be a theme-thing, as long as the grammar marks  
> them up
>
> me: Do you want the background for inline formulas to be different  
> than the one for multiline formulas? Because as things are already,  
> you can target the scope math.tex in your theme, and that would  
> color all math however you tell it to.

If you add a transparent background you can also markup lists and  
have nested lists shown in distinct colors!

>
>> (vii) You already have tab triggers for section, subsection and  
>> subsubsection, so how come chapter is missing?
>
> allan: (vii) oversight (and we rarely need it)

is it missing? I have one sitting here in my "sec" snippet, but then  
I do have many changes in the bundle itself and not all of the  
migrated out to my personal flavor… ;)

>> (viii) A way to execute bibtex (and pdflatex twice to see whether  
>> all additional citations have been included).
>
> allan: (viii) latexmk.pl should do that — maybe we should make this  
> the default, not sure if that would bother anyone (maybe some  
> workflows would mean much more time typesetting)
>
> me: latexmk.pl will actually do a lot more for you. The Help file  
> should describe how to set it up. I'd personally prefer not to have  
> it as the default. It is however easy to set it in your system.

Is it normal that latexmk.pl does 6 runs of pdflatex? I have found  
this to be too slow for most things and added my own "render"- 
commands; but I also had to include glosstex in the mix… Is there  
some easy way to configure this? But maybe one can expect that most  
latex-users would be able to hack their own changes into the bundle,  
but a certain level of comfortable configuration might be useful as  
well - best achieved by setting TM_VARIABLE, not?

So much for now… there are some more things that I cannot get my head  
straight at yet, but I will post updates in the future -- better  
observed while actually working on it.

Have a nice sunday,
Dan







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