[texworks] Early thoughts

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 18, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 18 sept. 08 à 14:26, Jonathan Kew a écrit :
>
>> On 18 Sep 2008, at 1:17 PM, Will Robertson wrote:
>>
>>> (5) As well as command completion, I'd like automatic trigger stuff.
>>> E.g., typing \begin{ on an otherwise empty line would immediately
>>> insert an \end{ on the next line and then fill in both environment
>>> delimiters at the same time as you typed the name of the  
>>> environment.
>>> Editing one of them would edit the other, simultaneously.
>>
>> Yes, that'd be slick.
>
> Please don't. Don't turn the TeXworks editor into some beast that  
> tries to be clever, that tries to guess what the user is willing to  
> type. Don't turn the editor into another Word, that considers every  
> time you type a bullet you're willing to create an itemized list,  
> that doesn't allow you to select exactly the piece of text you want  
> to select and that instead adds to/suppresses from the selection  
> spaces, punctuations, additional pieces of words.
>
> Don't. Or at least provide the user with a single switch to suppress  
> all these clever additions.
>
> There are users who like such additions. But there are also old- 
> style users like me who want an editor to type exactly what they  
> instruct it to type, no more no less, to select exactly what they  
> used their mouse to select, no more no less.
>
> Please no automatic indentation, no command completion, and the  
> like. That an editor highlights pieces of input (like syntax  
> coloring) is fine, because that doesn't alter the input in any way.  
> But have an editor create input, which the user hasn't explicitly  
> requested (by typing it) is to me properly unacceptable. To make a  
> more modern analogy, such "input help" feels to me as annoying and  
> as counter-productive as the dreaded iPhone auto-correction.
>
> Similar features, called "Electric Aliases", are precisely what made  
> me ditch Alpha (a Tcl-based Mac text editor "à la Emacs") which I  
> had switched to when an OzTeX user for some time. It was always  
> possible to disable these Electric Aliases, but that required  
> hunting the app preferences and disable them one by one, which was a  
> nuisance.
>
> Bruno Voisin


Howdy,

I agree with Bruno here. I worked on expanding command completion in  
TeXshop simply because I get to control when it happens; you've got to  
press ESC so nothing happens automatically. Many of the abbreviations  
in command completion come from the FasTeX set that is used by  
TypeIt4Me which drove me crazy because expansions are done  
automatically.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)