[OS X TeX] Various TeX programs on Mac

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Fri May 7 13:27:35 CEST 2004


Le 7 mai 04, à 12:21, m a écrit :

> By integrating typesetting and preview in one window and optionally 
> hiding the console, one can actually see how things are 
> interconnected. It's much closer to an actual typesetting job.
>
> This *may* go a bit against the "one document needs one 
> window"-guideline, but let's face it: Beginners most certainly don't 
> fully understand the fact that input and output are seperated *that 
> much*. Especially when one gives examples a la "it's like HTML", since 
> HTML is one file, and one file only -- it only gets interpreted 
> differently depending on the app you're in (editor, viewer).

I'm not sure I like the above idea. Possibly because I have grown, 
TeXwise, so to say, with Textures, and thus the concept of a 
multiwindow document is perfectly natural to me. Actually I like 
TeXShop especially for being as close to Textures as it can get. Thus 
I'm probably biased.

What about all these ancillary files LaTeX likes so much? Like BibTeX 
files. (Not the ones LaTeX produces, like .aux or .bbl files, but the 
ones it uses, like .bib files.)

In HTML, when you view a page and ask for the source to be displayed, 
the source is displayed in a separate window as well, in all the 
browsers that I know of.

I'm trying to think of an example of software where things are 
displayed the way you propose, but for the moment I can't find any. 
It's not quite the same as displaying thumbnails or a table of contents 
in a sidebar or drawer, like Keynote, Preview, PowerPoint, Reader, 
Acrobat or other applications do.

> Any thoughts?

Please no drawer (it seems to me in your screenshot that the console is 
implemented as a drawer, right?). Personally I find them the ultimate 
ugliness, and even Apple has given up on them in several recent 
applications like Safari, iTunes, Keynote, using sidebars instead. 
Actually the existence of the drawer in Mail is even making me think at 
times about switching to Thunderbird. I hope that in Tiger they will 
definitively become a thing of the past.

Bruno Voisin

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