[Mac OS X TeX] Re: MacOSX-TeX Digest #153 - 11/14/01

[Charles Bouldin]

<x-flowed>At 8:00 PM -0500 11/14/01, TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List wrote:
>Subject: [Mac OS X TeX] BBEdit plug-ins for teTeX
>From: "Tom Kiffe" <tom at kiffe.com>
>Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 21:26:43 -0600
>
>
>I have created three BBEdit and BBEdit Lite plug-ins that allow you 
>to issue commands from BBEdit to typeset a file with pdftex and 
>preview it with Acrobat Reader. These plug-ins give BBEdit much of 
>the functionality of TeXShop combined with a much more sophisticated 
>editor.
>
>The plug-ins work as follows. Open a tex document in BBEdit. After 
>editing the file go to BBEdit's Tool Menu and select pdflatex if 
>your document uses the latex format or pdftex if your document uses 
>the plain format. The plug-in opens a Terminal window, changes 
>directory to the directory containing your tex source file and 
>issues the command to run either pdflatex or pdftex on your source 
>file. When processing is finished and you have checked the Terminal 
>output for possible errors, hit command-w to close the Terminal 
>window and return to BBEdit. Now choose Reader from BBEdit's Tool 
>Menu and the plug-in will launch Acrobat Reader 5.0 and have it 
>display the pdf file just created.
>

I installed these and it works fine. A few comments:

I can't recommend using Preview as the pdfviewer. I used it and when 
I printed the .pdf file, it had print anomalies (using HP 990cse 
inkjet printer) and then my computer crashed!!!! YIKES! The same .pdf 
file prints fine from Adobe Acrobat. I have actually deleted the 
Preview application, since I have seen other problems with it. Only 
Acrobat for me from now on. YMMV.

On the plugins themselves, the main "problem" I have is that every 
time I run pdftex a new terminal window is spawned and it isn't 
deleted when the job ends.
I realize that this is how it is supposed to work, but wish that I 
wouldn't get a new terminal window everytime I run pdftex. I'd rather 
that an existing terminal window be used.

We still have the issue of pdf graphics files (sigh) when TeX mainly 
deals well with .ps files.

Just as cmactex and texshop allow choices between tex and pdftex, the 
plugins could allow the same choice?

Is there a way to make separator lines in the BBEdit so that the tex 
plugins are grouped together nicely?

>These plug-ins are just prototypes of what is possible when you want to use
>BBEdit as your TeX editor with teTeX . If there is sufficient interest in
>pursuing this topic I can easily create plug-ins for calling dvips, 
>ps2pdf, bibtex, makeindex, etc. I would gladly accept the assistance 
>of anyone who would like to help me make BBEdit a viable alternative 
>to TeXShop.


Well, I'm interested in seeing this go further. This is a nice 
minimalist approach to TeX on OS X. It uses standard tools and it 
doesn't reinvent the wheel (ie, BBEdit is already a fine editor, 
Acrobat is already a fine preview.) One missing piece is a convenient 
way to edit teTeX settings, ie, adding new style files, etc.










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