[OS X TeX] TeXShop features, AppleScripting

Joel Gilmore gilmore at physics.uq.edu.au
Wed Jun 23 04:19:54 EDT 2004


Hi all,

This is a slightly long email - I apologise in advance. So - I've just 
recently made the Switch from Windows to Mac, and, consequently, WinEdt 
to TeXShop for my latexing.  Now I like the TeXShop interface - very 
smooth! - and it has some nice features but there are several things 
from WinEdt that I really miss.   One was its very powerful internal 
scripting language.  This let you insert text, move the cursor around, 
delete text, etc.  Perfect for macros where you want to do some funky 
stuff!  I've thrashed google thoroughly trying to find some TeXShop 
alternatives, but to no avail.  Things that I miss:

* Internal scripting
* The ability to type a keyword (like "eq") in your document, his 
Alt-Enter (say, Command-Enter on the Mac) and have the corresponding 
Macro executed.  This was particularly useful because on the fly I 
could type "eq", hit alt-enter and have an equation environment ready 
for me to keep typing.  CommandCompletion almost does this, but not 
quite.
* Interactive \ref{} and \cite{} popups - when you typed the closing 
brace, it gathered all labels and bibliographic references and put them 
in a pop up, and you could select the one you wanted, and it would 
insert it automatically.  Very useful for remembering your labels!
* Project files - I often have several tex (or other text) files I want 
opened all together, not all of which will be type set, but are of 
relevance to my project.  It seems TeXShop can't do this?
* Bookmarks within my document!

Does anyone know of implementations for any of these? (Or if such 
things might be in the works?) I've been playing around with the macros 
and applescripting, but the internal macros aren't powerful enough for 
me to code the alt-enter macro (I need to be able to read text back 
from the cursor.  At a pinch I could select the text and execute a 
macro, but then I need to do conditional statements on that selection 
as to what to do.)

AppleScript looks more promising, but I can't get it to interact with 
the text in TeXShop (only reading or dumping the entire block of text, 
not inserting or moving the insertion point).  Does anyone know how to 
do this sort of thing, or could point me in the right direction?  I 
think there'll be quite a lag, too, which isn't so good for regularly 
called macros.  Particularly to implement the popup label thing.

I know the ITexMac has more power - but I can't stand hard wrapping.  
Got to be soft!  Particularly because I still go between Windows and 
Mac machines, and the tex just looks awful there.  It's a deal breaker 
for me, I'm afraid. Of course, none of this means I don't like TeXShop 
- I just miss those features!  And ideas or discussion much 
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Joel

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