[OS X TeX] New Macros, new Engines, new TeXShop versions, and all that

[Anthony Morton]

> TeXShop is the only application that I know which offers a  
> comparable macro facility where the user can attach his own key  
> short-cuts to a macro. David's proposal which you seem to support  
> would require that TS offers two separate macro facilities a default  
> set where the user can only temporarily attach  key short-cuts (up  
> to the next update) and a user defined set.

The way this is commonly done in other contexts is that if identically  
named items are found in the user space and the system space, the user  
version supersedes the system version.  Otherwise the functions  
provided are just the union of those in the system and user spaces.

The problem here is really one of granularity.  Ideally, it would be  
possible to create one's own version of a 'system' macro and have this  
preserved through an update, even where a new version of the system  
macros are provided.  But this isn't really consistent with having all  
the macros contained in the one .plist file.  So I wonder if it would  
be feasible to consider breaking up the Macros into separate .plist  
files, one for each macro.

One could even imagine granularity going right down to the individual  
property level, so if one wanted to patch a system macro to provide a  
different key equivalent, one would just put a .plist in the user  
directory with the same name as the macro, with just the single  
'Keyboard' property.  But again, I'm not sure how complicated it would  
be programmer-wise to support this level of granularity.

Tony M.