[texworks] Some remarks

[Jonathan Kew]

On 30 Oct 2008, at 13:50, Alain Delmotte wrote:

> Hi to every TeXworks (pre)lovers,
>
> Here some remarks about the way TeXworks works and others. (working  
> on Windows)
>
> 1) When one compile single file or sub-document of a project, one is  
> back on the first line of the main file (issues 57 and 59 - due to  
> the save operation).
> Very annoying!

Yes! #59 was a Windows-only issue and is now fixed in the source, I  
believe, so the next build should be better. I'm also hoping to work  
on #57 shortly.

> 2)  tw-latex.txt completion file should be looked at.
> For example there are 2 "it" entries for \textit{} and \item.

Yes, there are "duplicate" abbreviations; this is by design.  
Repeatedly pressing the completion key (currently TAB) will cycle  
through the possible completions for what was typed (and Shift-TAB  
will cycle backwards, which can be handy if there are quite a few and  
you miss the one you wanted).

> Also, it would be good to have all shortcuts duplicated without "\"

I'd be interested to hear what others think about this. The current  
list basically comes from what's distributed with TeXShop. I've  
noticed that some abbreviations are provided without \, but others  
aren't; I'm not a heavy user of these so I don't feel qualified to say  
what's most useful.

> as this is difficult to enter on some keyboards (ex. French: AltGr 
> +<, or even Ctrl+Alt+<);

How do French TeX users tolerate this in general? If I were a French  
TeX user, I think I'd want a customized layout as a matter of urgency!

> it is the reason why for the French translation I propose Ctrl+$ to  
> show/hide the output panel (Ctrl+\ is impossible to get)

That's reasonable, I think; there is no rule that shortcuts have to be  
the same across all localizations. Alternatively, I wondered about  
using Ctrl-=, but that is currently "Show Selection" in the editor.

I suppose the ideal would be to enable the shortcuts to adapt to the  
current *keyboard layout*, which is independent of the currently- 
selected *interface language*, but that's not likely to happen! I do  
expect to make the shortcuts (and other things) user-configurable  
eventually, however, so then you'll be able to change them to suit  
your preferred keyboard layout.

>
> 3) Keyboard shortcuts: I propose to replace Ctrl+G for "Search  
> again" by Ctrl+Shift+F to be coherent with Ctrl+Shift+R "Replace  
> again".
> But this would require to have another shortcut for "Full screen"

Not a problem at the moment, because Full Screen is only available for  
the PDF window, and there are currently no search features there. But  
I hope to implement search in the PDF eventually, so we need to  
anticipate that.

How about:

   Ctrl-F        Find
   Ctrl-Shift-F  Find Again     (was Ctrl-G)
   Ctrl-R        Replace
   Ctrl-Shift-R  Replace Again
   Ctrl-G        Go to Line     (was Ctrl-L)
   Ctrl-L        Show Selection (was Ctrl-=)

   Ctrl-=        Show/Hide Output

   Ctrl-0        Full Screen    (was Ctrl-Shift-F)

Any thoughts?

>
> Other possibilities: use of the Fx keys (experience of other OS  
> needed)!

Yes, this is also a possibility. I know F3 for Find Again is common on  
Windows. Personally, I think trying to make the keys somewhat mnemonic  
makes them easier to learn than arbitrarily assigning F-numbers. But I  
guess this is a matter of taste. Making them all configurable will  
largely avoid the issue (though we'll still need to pick some defaults  
to ship).

> 4) When one "Save" a new file or "Save as": one should take care to  
> add the .tex extension.
> I propose to have it automatically added!!

Yes. Unfortunately, the platform File-Save dialogs don't all behave in  
quite the same way, but I'll look into this. Forcing the presence of  
the extension (so it is impossible to Save As a filename with no  
extension) seems a bit severe to me, but it would be good to do the  
"right thing" by default as much as possible.

> 5) The problem to get the accented capitals and others using AltGr+ù  
> and E (for \'E on a French keyboard and probably on others) comes  
> from Qt as it is the same in Linguist.

OK, good to know this; we may still be able to do something about it.  
(You could also consider filing a report at http://trolltech.com/developer/task-tracker 
, if it's an issue with Qt text editing in general.)

Thanks for all the comments,

Jonathan