[OS X TeX] Additions to TeXShop Tips & Tricks?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Herb,

On 03/12/2010, at 8:57 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:

> Howdy,
> 
> The `TeXShop Tips & Tricks' document has been stable at version 0.1.4 dated 2010/11/06 for a while now. If you want it you can download TeXShopTips-0.1.4.zip from <https://public.me.com/herbs2>.
> 
> The question that comes up now is how should it be extended. There are three directions it can take: add more beginning material, add deeper discussion of things that would interest more advanced users or both. I'd guess the third one but the question that then arises is what topics need deeper discussion. Should there be a discussion of document/input encoding or doesn't that belong in a document about TeXShop?

I think that it could well do.

Think about copy/paste of material from a web-page, then trying 
to typeset it. Will it work at all? 
The result figures to be highly dependent upon what encoding was
used on the web-page, and whether this was preserved under the 
Copy/Paste, or was it converted to something else by the OS.

In either case, you'll not be able to fix problems without having
an understanding of the possible encodings --- even if the discussion
is just saying "if it doesn't work first time, then try (a), (b)
or (c) in that order.  If none of these work then there are
other possibilities too. Here is a (nearly) complete list, showing
what languages the encoding is commonly used for."

> More discussion about personalizing and setting up TeXShop?
> 
> I definitely don't want a Menu Item by Menu Item or a `follow these directions' kind of document.


BTW, I just gave a 1-day workshop on LaTeX to (mostly) complete
beginners --- but PhD candidates, so very intelligent beginners.
We were using TeXworks with MikTeX under Windows --- it was
amazingly simple to use!

After some discussion on the similarities of LaTeX to HTML,
so far as structuring documents, and embedding structured pieces 
within other structure (e.g., as in a Wiki), their starting
exercise was to get some info from a website and try to make
a decent presentation of it.
This then throws up the common complications (e.g. $ signs, & ,
quote characters, etc.) for direct discovery and discussion.
I was expecting to have to worry about encodings too, but that
did not actually eventuate.



> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Herb Schulz
> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)



Cheers,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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