[OS X TeX] Praise for TeXniscope

[Joachim Kock]

Bravo, Massimiliano,
thanks a lot for your good work.

Despite its young age, TeXniscope is already the best previewer on OSX!
(in the opinion of Yours Sincerely, anyway).

This statement may surprise fans of TeXShop and iTeXMac, but these two
great programmes were never dedicated previewers, focusing instead on
editing and texing --- it is only natural that they now lack behind when it
comes to previewing.

In case you've missed it, here are the very precious new features in
TeXniscope 0.3:

* You can define your own keyborad shortcuts for navigating the preview.
E.g. space for scrollPageDown, w for zoomToWidth, etc.  (Note the
importance of having unmodified keys --- if you are reading a paper
on-screen it is very important that you can navigate with one hand, so that
your other hand is free to hold a beer or a cup of coffee --- seriously.)

* There are AppleScript commands for setting the magnification (including
zoomToFit and zoomToWidth).  This is really convenient for controlling the
viewer from your editor.

Another very dear feature is the "Go To Page..."  (Cmd-G) letting you
navigate the document with the keyboard.  (In TeXShop and iTeXMac you can
only page-navigate using the toolbar, and in particular you are forced to
have the toolbar turned on.  This is waste of screen, especially on a
portable computer.  Another reason why in TeXShop and iTeXMac you do need
the toolbar is that it is the only means of knowing which page you are
viewing.  In TeXniscope there are convenient small indicators (page number
and magnification) at the bottom left of the window (a la OzTeX), and you
can abolish the toolbar altogether (not unlike the -spartan option in
xdvi).

Finally, TeXniscope is very good at synchronising --- it seems to be the
only previewer around that understands both pdfsync and dvi src specials.

Cheers,
Joachim.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Joachim Kock <kock at mat.uab.es>
Departament de Matemàtiques -- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Edifici C -- 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) -- ESPANYA
Phone: +34 93 581 32 50        Fax: +34 93 581 27 90
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