[texworks] Early thoughts

[Jonathan Kew]

On 18 Sep 2008, at 2:52 PM, Will Robertson wrote:

>>> (1) The UI can be simplified! The following items should be dropped
>>> from the "Format" menu since they're already (rightly) included in  
>>> the
>>> preferences:
>>>  - "Font…"
>>>  - "Wrap lines"
>>>  - "Syntax Coloring"
>>
>> Well, they're not the same thing. The Preferences dialog sets the  
>> defaults for newly-opened editor windows; the Format menu items  
>> affect the current window only.
>>
>> Now maybe that's not necessary or helpful; maybe these settings  
>> should be "global", not set for individual windows at all. Anyone  
>> have thoughts on this?
>
> Why would you want to change the font or syntax highlighting  
> individually?

Those of us who work with "unusual" languages sometimes like to set a  
different font for those files than in our TeX macros. (Of course,  
this suggests that I might want it to *remember* per-file settings,  
but that's not implemented, at least not yet.)

> Word wrap I can see a slight use for, but, well, is it worth  
> cluttering up the menu with a rarely used feature? :) (this is a  
> hard game, I agree)

Yes, I'm not sure either. Are there other things that *should* be  
there instead? It doesn't seem cluttered to me yet, but that could  
change.

>
> I think matching the \usepackage only if there's no whitespace  
> before it (i.e., at the beginning of the line) will help that a fair  
> bit. And detecting *both* fontspec & microtype is a give-away, too.  
> So there's another big chunk.
>
> Yeah, you'll never be able to get 100% of the cases but I *believe*  
> (at least) you'll be able to get a fair majority.
>
>> (Might also want to detect \usepackage{pst*} and default to using  
>> simpdftex.)
>
> Unless (auto-)pst-pdf is loaded :)

Yes.... there are no doubt lots of cases to consider. But I agree it'd  
be nice to handle as much as possible of this "automagically".

JK