[Mac OS X TeX] Re: MacOSX-TeX Digest #4 - 05/02/01

[Barry Smith]

I note that Textures' Synchronicity is -not- based on
TeX \specials and works with all TeX documents without requiring
any special macros - it's built into the TeX engine itself,
and works in both directions, from source -> typeset and the reverse.

Before implementing Synchronicity, we considered using TeX \special
commands to mark locations, and concluded that the results could not
meet our desires for transparency and accuracy.

As Arthur asks about "any" implementations, I note that Michael Vulis'
VTeX, Vector TeX, and (now) Visual TeX for Windows includes a very similar
facility, originally called "debugging" mode; I see now that Michael
has chosen to call it something very similiar, "synchronization".
It turns out that VTeX's debugging mode predates our Synchronicity feature,
although we were completely unaware of this work at the time we introduced
Textures 2.0 with Synchronicity.


Best regards,

Barry Smith, TeXnician
Blue Sky Research


> Subject: Re: [Mac OS X TeX] source specials?
> From: "Arthur Ogus" <ogus at math.berkeley.edu>
> Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 07:08:30 -0700
> 
> Thanks.  Based just on a reading of the reference you provided, it seems
> that this feature isn't as powerful as what TeXtures can do---find not just
> the corresponding line, but even (usually) the corresponding character,
> in both directions.  Or am I wrong?  Does it work with the same (or a
> similar) suite of Appleevents as the TeXtures-BBedit interface?  I'd
> like to know, since I wrote an editor myself which implements this
> feature which (naturally) I much prefer to BBedit.  (It's much closer
> to emacs.)
> 
> > There is a beta version of macdvi 2.5 included with Carbon CMacTeX
> > which implements this on OS X with BBEdit 6.1. See the "Recent
> > Changes" section of the CMacTeX Web Page (http://www.kiffe.com/cmactex.html).
>
> > > Are there any implementations of TeX which match TeXtures' superb
> > > implementation of "source specials", which enable one to coordinate
> > > the location in the typeset file with the location in the source file
> > > (preferably in an extenal editor which can be chosen at will)?

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