[TxMt] Latex Config and backward compatibility questions

[Brad Miller]

Hi All,

I'm working on an all new version of the Latex and View command.  See my
earlier message for you you can switch to this branch of the svn repository
if you'd like to beta test.  I'm hoping to commit a major new version
today.  I've attached a screenshot of the configuration window.

Whats missing?
Is the wording on the options for opening the viewer clear?

Here is another big question I've been thinking about.  Since all of these
new configuration settings will be stored along with the standard TextMate
prefereces in a preferences file, how much backward compatibility should
this new version try to maintain?

The current Latex and View command has grown organically over the life of
TextMate and there are lots of environment variables that have been added
over time, some that are semi-redundant even.

TM_LATEX_PROGRAM
TM_LATEX_COMPILER
TM_LATEX_VIEWER
TM_LATEX_ERRLVL
TM_LATEX_OPTIONS

All of the above can/will be replaced with the new interface, and I think we
should make a break and do away with these.

TM_LATEX_MASTER
This one is more interesting.  We currently have two ways to specify a
master/root file.  Using this variable, or using the TexShop %!TEX directive
embedded directly in the file.  The TexShop way seems clearly superior to me
since it allows for more flexibility than a single environment variable per
directory or project.  So my proposal is that the environment variable goes
away.

TEX_PSTRICKS
Since we can automatically detect when we should use latex instead of
pdflatex this is redundant and should go away.

As I mentioned above, TexShop allows authors to embed directives right in
their source file that specify a master file, there are others as well.  I
propose that we use that same set of directives and allow the following
in-file settings to take precedence over the preferences set in the
preference dialog box:

TS-options   -- command line options passed to the latex engine
TS-program -- the typesetting engine to use just for this file
encoding -- how the file is encoded, I don't really know what to do with
this one.  Anybody?

I've looked at the TexShop documentation and I think this is it, are there
other %!TEX directives I'm missing?

Thanks,

Brad
-- 
Brad Miller
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Luther College
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