texwork (was Re: [OS X TeX] synctex)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 15 Jul 2008, at 6:19 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 15 juil. 08 à 17:53, Herbert Schulz a écrit :
>
>> Very nice and the Qt framework is more Mac-like than I expected.
>
> Agreed! It feels a bit odd to have New / Open / Save / Undo / Redo /  
> Cut / Copy / Paste /  Find / Replace icons in the toolbar (very  
> Windows- and Office-like),

Yes, I realize this is not so prevalent in the Mac world, though as  
you say, things like Office tend to do it even on the Mac. Note that  
you can hide the toolbars if you don't want to waste space for them;  
eventually you'll be able to customize their content, but for now  
they're predefined.

> but you get used to it after some time. And I imagine that's the  
> price to pay for cross-platform-"ity".

Sort of. I'm happy to adapt to each platform, to some extent at least,  
but I also think there's a benefit to at least having the potential  
for an identical setup on each. Imagine a class full of new college  
students being introduced to LaTeX at the start of term.... it could  
make life a lot easier if everyone has a working environment that  
looks and behaves the same, even though some are on Windows, some on  
Linux, some on OS X.

> A couple of remarks:
>
> - The app and document icons bring out a bit of nostalgia (TeX/gX?).

Haha.... yes, they're just quick-n-dirty recycled material at this  
point! I hope someone with actual talent will do some really cool  
ones.........

> - After unpacking the TeXworks application (even before opening it  
> or moving it to /Applications), a number of text-only documents on  
> the disk (such as .cfg files, .tex files, etc.) get suddenly the  
> TeXworks document icon.

Really? Wow.... world domination at a stroke. :) (Sorry, I'm in a  
silly mood!) I think this is related to app packaging and the  
Info.plist file, which has not really been addressed yet; need to look  
into this. (Speaking of packaging, eventually I expect we'll try to  
static-link more of the libs, to avoid possible conflicts in /usr/ 
local/lib or wherever....)

>
> - Selecting the editor font does not seem to work. I changed the  
> font to Monaco 12, checked that the preference file had been set  
> accordingly:
>
> $ defaults read org.tug.TeXworks font
> Monaco,12,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
>
> But when TeXworks is relaunched (even after logging out/in or  
> restarting), still Lucida Grande 13 is used.
>
> - The editor font may be set in two ways: through the Format menu,  
> or through Preferences > Editor. Are these two ways fully equivalent?

In theory, Preferences > Editor should set a persistent default,  
whereas the Format menu would just set the font for the current  
window. However, it sounds like Prefs doesn't stick at the moment.  
That's a bug (a few lines of code that didn't get written yet, I  
guess); feel free to put it on the issue tracker. :)

Thanks for the comments!

JK