[OS X TeX] [editors] TextMate

[Richard Seguin]

But it's also missing support for proportional type. I was able to get 
a few to display, but it looks terrible. I really don't like working 
with fixed width fonts. They're all right for programming code, but 
tiring for paragraph formatted text.

(If you've never tried it, you should try Georgia. This proportional 
font has easy to read brackets and braces, unlike a lot of other 
proportional fonts. Thanks to whoever it was on this list who alerted 
me to this one a few years ago!)

Another thing that it's missing is the navigation that TeXShop and 
iTeXMac provides us. BBEdit can easily duplicate the tag system in 
TeXShop, but this editor can't do this yet. Folding may be helpful 
here, but I don't think it's a substitute.

Richard Séguin

On Nov 25, 2004, at 6:58 PM, Will Robertson wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Given the recent mention of a couple of "TeX-using" programs, I 
> thought I'd just comment on a new editor that I've seen get a lot of 
> mention elsewhere but nothing yet here. I tried it out for a while 
> yesterday (there is a 30 day free trial but after that it costs US$50) 
> and thought I'd share my findings...
>
> TextMate is a stand-alone editor, and it feels a bit like SubEthaEdit 
> (without the OpenTalk collaborative editing) if you've used that.
>
> It has in-built LaTeX syntax colouring and an extensible 
> templates/key-binding system which uses shell scripts (I think? At 
> least regular expressions with the sed program). There is no 
> applescript support (yet?), so scripts like we have in TeXShop and 
> iTeXMac are currently not possible. So far, nothing remarkable.
>
> However, there are also a couple of novel features that I think are 
> worth bringing up:
>
> It supports "bookmarks" without effecting the text of the document. I 
> don't know how it stores this information, but it allows you to flag 
> lines of the text and cycle through them with the F2 key.
>
> It can change between soft and hard wrapping very nicely, and 
> re-format hard wrapped paragraphs so remove any "holes". I know emacs 
> can do this, but it's the first Cocoa editor I know of that does.
>
> It also has a projects mode which supports a hierarchy of documents in 
> a draw that are also represented in a "tabbed-browsing" mode.
>
> Most exciting is its ability to "fold" code.
> Any \begin{}...\end{} block may be collapsed into a single line in the 
> source with a disclosure triangle in the left margin.
>
> So something like:
>
>    1| \begin{equation} \label{eq:laplace}
>    2|   F(s) = \mathcal{L}\,\{ f(t) \} = \int^\infty_0\! f(t) 
> e^{-st}\,\mathrm{d}t
>    3| \end{equation}
>    4|
>
> Turns to:
>
>    1| \begin{equation} \label{eq:laplace} ...
>    4|
>
> This folding idea is something I've had in the back of my mind for 
> ages, and I think it could be a huge feature for a TeX editor if 
> extended further to include curly braces and section commands and so 
> on. (This is extensible, so it could be done easily by someone who 
> knows regular expressions well.)
>
> So the next step to get this program working nicely for TeX is to add 
> in typesetting commands and TeXniscope integration, both of which are 
> possible now by writing some support files (which would be fairly 
> easy). The syntax highlighting and extra nice stuff could also be 
> improved.
>
> So my feeling is that if more support files are written, this editor 
> could be very interesting. To be honest, since we're paying I'd like 
> the authors of the program to write them, but if they don't use TeX 
> they might not get all the details right.
>
> I'd be interested in hearing your own comments.
>
> Will
>
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           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
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