[Mac OS X TeX] Anyone _use_ OS X TeX for productivity?

[Bruno Voisin]

<x-flowed>> My documents have LOTS of mathematics...LOTS and LOTS of equation 
> environments, lots of different typestyles.  Doing it all "raw" from 
> the keyboard would be incredibly frustrating.  I guess I'll stick with 
> Alpha/Textures and 9.1.

I'm an applied mathematician and type in LOTS of mathematics most days. 
I tend to think that it's more efficient to write "raw" LaTeX code than 
rely on sophisticated facilities of editors such as Alpha/Emacs which: 
(1) have bugs at times; (2) are unfriendly to non-US keyboards; (3) 
generate "unclean" LaTeX idiom which is better polished by hand, anyway.

In other words, I'm quite happy with the text editor in TeXShop. On the 
other hand, a few features (with French Mac OS X):

- Search/Replace does not work.

- Typing "e" in the console window when an error is encountered does not 
work.

- TeXShop seems to understand all types of line endings (Mac: CR, Unix: 
LF, DOS: CR/LF), but generates only Unix-style line endings. This causes 
problems when .tex files are used by other applications. Why not do 
everything Mac-style (at least)?

- Saving the preview scale in Preferences... does not work.

And wishes:

- It would be nice to be able to specify the length of each line in the 
.tex file (i.e., the number of character where wrapping takes place).

- It would be nice to be able to use the arrow keys to scroll down/up a 
given page/document.

- It would be nice to have shortcuts for moving to the last/first page 
of a document.

- It would be nice to move the teTeX tree to a place visible to the 
Finder (then, for example, the docs would be easier to locate).

- Keyboard shortcuts to switch windows (tex/pdf/console) would be nice.

- It would be nice to be able to comment/uncomment and indent/unindent 
entire blocks of text.

- Something very handy in DirectTeX, which I have never seen in any 
other Mac TeX implementation: in the Preview window, click on a given 
character and have the font/size/character code displayed.

Finally I am a Lucida fonts devotee, and I miss them under OS X. I'd 
rather avoid the Unix-style installation suggested by Tom Kiffe, though 
I agree it works; I still belong to "the rest of us", and it seems to me 
that the procedure advocated by Art Ogawa would be much more "Mac": 
having the fonts in Mac format reside in ~/Library/Fonts or 
/System/Library/Fonts. But I agree from previous experience with 
Textures and OzTeX that a working Lucida installation means an awful lot 
of work!

Cheers,

Bruno Voisin


-----------------------------------------------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"help" (no quotes) in the body.
This list is not moderated, and I am not responsible for
messages posted by third parties.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
</x-flowed>