[OS X TeX] TeXShop features, AppleScripting
Joel Gilmore
gilmore at physics.uq.edu.au
Wed Jun 23 10:19:54 CEST 2004
Hi all,
This is a slightly long email - I apologise in advance. So - I've just
recently made the Switch from Windows to Mac, and, consequently, WinEdt
to TeXShop for my latexing. Now I like the TeXShop interface - very
smooth! - and it has some nice features but there are several things
from WinEdt that I really miss. One was its very powerful internal
scripting language. This let you insert text, move the cursor around,
delete text, etc. Perfect for macros where you want to do some funky
stuff! I've thrashed google thoroughly trying to find some TeXShop
alternatives, but to no avail. Things that I miss:
* Internal scripting
* The ability to type a keyword (like "eq") in your document, his
Alt-Enter (say, Command-Enter on the Mac) and have the corresponding
Macro executed. This was particularly useful because on the fly I
could type "eq", hit alt-enter and have an equation environment ready
for me to keep typing. CommandCompletion almost does this, but not
quite.
* Interactive \ref{} and \cite{} popups - when you typed the closing
brace, it gathered all labels and bibliographic references and put them
in a pop up, and you could select the one you wanted, and it would
insert it automatically. Very useful for remembering your labels!
* Project files - I often have several tex (or other text) files I want
opened all together, not all of which will be type set, but are of
relevance to my project. It seems TeXShop can't do this?
* Bookmarks within my document!
Does anyone know of implementations for any of these? (Or if such
things might be in the works?) I've been playing around with the macros
and applescripting, but the internal macros aren't powerful enough for
me to code the alt-enter macro (I need to be able to read text back
from the cursor. At a pinch I could select the text and execute a
macro, but then I need to do conditional statements on that selection
as to what to do.)
AppleScript looks more promising, but I can't get it to interact with
the text in TeXShop (only reading or dumping the entire block of text,
not inserting or moving the insertion point). Does anyone know how to
do this sort of thing, or could point me in the right direction? I
think there'll be quite a lag, too, which isn't so good for regularly
called macros. Particularly to implement the popup label thing.
I know the ITexMac has more power - but I can't stand hard wrapping.
Got to be soft! Particularly because I still go between Windows and
Mac machines, and the tex just looks awful there. It's a deal breaker
for me, I'm afraid. Of course, none of this means I don't like TeXShop
- I just miss those features! And ideas or discussion much
appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Joel
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