[OS X TeX] lost message? Suggestions for TeXShop

[Herb Schulz]

On 6/15/04 1:21 PM, "Denis Chabot" <chabotd at globetrotter.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I sincerely apologize, but I sent this message on Saturday and never
> saw it in the digests that I receive. Maybe it got lost somehow. So I
> repost it a shorter/modified version because I care about some points,
> and add a couple more questions.
>

Howdy,

It came through before.
 
> Repost:
> ========
> Thank you list, as usual answers come quickly for my questions in
> message titled "memoir class, Table questions, position of floats, line
> numbering": you solved most of my questions.
> ...
> I'd like to make a wish for an improvement in TeXShop (unless it is
> there and I have not found it). Does the author visit this list, or
> should I also contact him?
> 

The authors, Richard Koch, et. al., do visit and see what's happening.

> My document is only 15 pages so far, but I already find it difficult to
> type references to my tables and figures. I guess I'll be able to
> manage by using the split pane feature of TeXShop, but what would be
> very nice would be a new feature that would work like Tags (is Tags a
> button, a drop-down menu??). This could be a new menu (button) called
> Ref, and would track automatically the labels in a document (just as
> Tags automatically tracks all the headings and manually inserted
> markers (those that begin with %: ). When clicking on this button, a
> list of available labels would appear, a bit like when inserting a
> reference to a table or a figure in Word gives you a list of available
> tables and figures to choose from. Selecting an entry would
> automatically put ~\ref{the_chosen_label} at the cursor's position in
> the text.
> 

I don't think that is available but it is a nice idea.

> A second request would make all the shortcuts available in Macros, Tags
> (and Refs) so much more useful (right now it is often faster to just
> type them) if they were available as a contextual menu when one
> right-clicks (or control clicks) at a certain position in the text.
> 

I'm not sure what you mean here.

> ========
> 
> Now more questions. Where can one locate the "Local guide" that so many
> of the tutorials I consult mention? I searched the /usr/local/tetex
> folder (finder's search) and did not find it.
> 

Usually exists on systems where one person is in charge of maintaining TeX
for a large group of users.

> Also, I cannot type any quote characters that work. I tried simple
> quotes on both sides of a word, I've tried curly quotes, but it does
> not work.
> 

The standard method for "open double quote" is two "left single quotes", ``,
and "close double quote" is two apostrophes, ''. Using single versions gives
single versions.

> Finally, why is it that sometimes I can fix a mistake and then compile
> successfully, but other times I fix the mistake (I know I did because I
> revert to a solution that worked previously) but I keep getting the
> same error message until I delete all but the .tex file from the folder
> where my document sits. Are there errors in some intermediate files
> (.aux?) that keep killing the compile time and time again? If so, in
> addition to "erreur" and "abandonne" (I'm not sure what the console
> tells you in English), it would be nice to have a button that removes
> the offending file instead of necessitating a trip to the finder.
> 

A while back Will Robertson gave an Applescript that can be added to the
Macros Menu that does exactly this. I'll repeat it here:
--------------------
--Applescript

tell application "Finder"
    set texpath to alias posix file #TEXPATH#
    set texfolder to the container of texpath
    set texname_ext to the name of (alias posix file #TEXPATH#)
    set texname to the do shell script  "echo "& quoted form of texname_ext
& " | cut -d . -f 1"
    set texfiles to every file in texfolder whose name contains texname
end tell

set files_to_delete to {}
set filenames_to_delete to {}
    
repeat with this_file in texfiles
    if (the name extension of this_file is not "tex") and (the name
extension of this_file is not "pdf") then
        set the end of files_to_delete to (this_file)
        set the end of filenames_to_delete to "   " & (the name of this_file
as string) & return
    end if
end repeat

tell application "TeXShop" to display dialog "Are you sure you want to move
the following files to the trash?" & return & filenames_to_delete as string
buttons {"Keep", "Trash"} default button "Trash" with icon caution

if the button returned of the result is "Trash" then
    tell application "Finder" to move every item of files_to_delete to the
trash
end if
--------------------
You must get rid of extraneous carriage returns introduced by your news
reader!

> I hope you won't find me ungrateful to suggest all these changes to
> TeXShop: I really appreciate this program.
> 
> Bye and thanks in advance,
> 
> Denis Chabot
> 

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)

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