[texworks] Beginners' needs (was: Lua scripting)

[Alain Delmotte]

Hello!

David J. Perry a écrit :
> .../...
> 1. Do keep it simple (uncluttered GUI) and do keep the beginner's 
> needs in mind.

Yes, this is very important! But perhaps with hidden possibilities for 
the other users. (for example the actions.ini for defining shortcuts and 
Lua for other actions)

> 2. I think TeXworks acutally _needs_ only three enhancements (as 
> opposed things that are nice, fun, cool but not essential).
>
> 3. In fact, I think TeXworks works so well that I'd like to see the 
> official version 1 sooner rather than later.  This would let more 
> people try it. (BTW: thanks to Alain for those Windows binaries.  I do 
> a lot of computer related stuff, but have no interest in buildling 
> software!)

Neither do I :-)) Well that is not completely true; in another life, I 
have been programming quite a lot (in simple Basic), but now I cann't 
anymore (do not have time and knowledge about the present day systems).

> 4. The three enhancements that I think are truly needed include:
> a. a better manual and/or integrated help system

Sure, I have many points on the to-do list, but time! time! time!
(I thought that having up-to-date binaries for Windows was more 
important; now that I can do this more or less routinely, I'll try to go 
back to the manual).

Your are right that some introduction to what is the meaning of the 
different options of the interface is important, but, on another hand, I 
also have the experience that, when a manual becomes too tick, beginners 
do not use it.

I did create a collaborative site for the manual, you can join, go to: 
http://affinitiz.com/space/texworks and click "Rejoindre la communauté"
(Sorry the background is in French!)
I was also planing to transform the manual to html and this in turn 
could be linked to TeXworks as the help file (even using F1)!
What do you think about the idea?

> b. the ability to print source code (for debugging this is sometimes 
> convenient) as well as the PDF output

For printing, opening in Acrobat Reader is OK, but if you forget to 
close it, you can not write. I think it is the problem you were 
referring to!
But the program SumatraPDF allows you to open a file, go back to 
TeXworks, compile and when you go back to Sumatra the file is updated!!!

Perhaps an automatic launch of Sumatra from TeXworks!!! But this is one 
more information to grasp.

Sumatra was created as a viewer, but very quickly it got links to LaTeX, 
including Synctex possibility. But I don't know if Sumatra exists 
outside of Windows nor if there is something equivalent on the other 
platforms!

> c. improved help with errors

This has been proposed in different ways (like highlighting of keywords 
in the log, ...) and that's where Lua came in to achieve this even 
without any addition to the interface (Stefan test was just to show that 
it is possible).

Now for the location of the output panel and the possibility to 
Ctrl+clic in it to go to the error line.... ? I think it is quite 
another story. But sure, I'd also like to have these!

> .../...
And, David, thanks for the introduction to XeTeX!

Regards,

Alain