[OS X TeX] TeXShop suggestions/questions

[Bruno Voisin]

Le mercredi, 20 nov 2002, à 10:26 Europe/Paris, Maarten Sneep a écrit :

> On 20-Nov-02 Juan Manuel Palacios wrote:
> [snip]
>>       And lastly, more than a question what I have now is a suggestion
>> and it is about syntax coloring. Plenty here have said how they'd 
>> prefer
>> the $ enclosed math mode to be colored green just the same as the $
>> symbol itself. If I am allowed I would like to speak my mind on this
>> one. I don't think this would benefit the understanding of the text 
>> very
>> much because the subsequent coloring of the math commands would be
>> completely lost.
>
> That may be true, But since there is no `direction' on the $'s (just 
> by looking
> at one, you cannot see if it is a closing one, or a opening one), I'd 
> prefer
> some indication as to which side really is in math mode.
>
> [snip]
>
> I would like to suggest a third mode (although the colours should be 
> settable
> in the preferences). Since math mode is applied to a range, one could 
> consider
> to make the background of the text that is in math mode to turn light 
> green.
> This way the math stands out, you're sure when the math-mode is 
> entered en
> closed and you keep the syntax colouring in math mode. Besides, 
> computers are
> much better at couning characters than I am.

I support the original suggestion, not to colour the text in between 
the two $'s. I also wouldn't like a coloured background, I think in 
would create too many coloured zones (as in badly designed overcrowded 
web pages), distracting attention from the content. It would look a bit 
like hyperlinks created with the hyperref package, normally framed with 
a red box ; for hyperlinks it is not too annoying, as normally there 
are not many hyperlinks per page (and even so I have set hyperref so 
that these boxes are not shown), but for equations in a standard page 
of TeX input it would look overcrowded I think.

In LaTeX normally math mode is entered with \( = \begin{math} and 
exited with \) = \end{math}, these directional commands replacing the 
non-directional plain TeX ones, $ and $ (in the same way as \[ = 
\begin{displaymath} and \] = \end{displaymath} replace $$ and $$). The 
problem is that these commands are fragile and thus cannot be used in 
figure captions, for example, without being \protect'ed. This was true, 
at least, for old versions of LaTeX; I haven't tried to use them for 
some time now (I stick, as most people do, to $ an $), maybe they have 
become robust in the meantime.

Bruno Voisin

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