[OS X TeX] Wish for TexShop's command completion

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jul 1, 2011, at 3:11 AM, Eric van der Oord wrote:

> I would  like that typing "f^xa" and pressing trigger gave "f^{\alpha}".  instead of "f{xa}"
> 
> Just so save hundreds of "SPACE" a day...
> 
> Eric
> Le 30 juin 2011 à 23:50, Herbert Schulz a écrit :
> 
>> 
>> On Jun 30, 2011, at 12:00 PM, Eric van der Oord wrote:
>> 
>>> Could "{",  "(" and "[" be word boundary characters ?
>>> 
>>> Grateful regards to the Texshop's development team
>>> 
>>> Eric
>> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> First, { and ( already are word boundary characters. However, { (and \ also) behaves a bit differently than the other word boundary characters in that it becomes part of the word. That is so, e.g., writing
>> 
>> \begin{enu
>> 
>> and pressing the trigger can expand to a complete enumerate environment. But ( already works.
>> 
>> We don't have [ as a word boundary character but might consider doing so if there are good examples of how it would be used.
>> 
>> Good Luck,
>> 
>> Herb Schulz
>> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)

Howdy,

Now now only [ (still don't know why) but ^ (and I suppose _ too).

You can solve the problem by 

1)turning on Key Bindings (TeXShop->Preferences->Source->Editor->Key Bindings) which will automatically create ^{} with the cursor in between (I know that there are some problems on a French keyboard and a macro assigned to a key may be the easiest solution); and

2)Editing the Command Completion file (Source->Command Completion->Edit Command Completion File…) and do the following. Find the and select the complete list if greek character abbreviations that start with

xcx:=\Xi

and end with

xa:=\alpha

and duplicate them. Then place { in front of each of the duplicates and abbreviations, e.g.,

{xa:={\alpha

then when you write f and ^ you will get

f^{}

with the cursor between the braces. Finally typing xa to get

f^{xa}

with the cursor just after the `xa' will give the expansion

f^{\alpha}

with the cursor before the }.

If you literally want f^{\alpha} rather than a more general thing (g^{\beta}) the easiest thing is to create a macro to do the whole thing.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)