[OS X TeX] Bibdesk + autocompletion

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Jan 8, 2006, at 07:28, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Jan 8, 2006, at 9:00 AM, Claus Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> Using Bibdesk's autocompletion feature in TexShop works fine  
>> though there are two improvements I would like to suggest:
>>
>> - When the line where the citation should be inserted is near the  
>> bottom of the screen the little poup window with the suggestions  
>> can only partially be seen and the scroll arrows are hidden. It  
>> would be better, if the position of the popup window would depend  
>> on the relative position of the cursor with respect to the screen.  
>> In fact it wouldn't hurt, if the default position would be at the  
>> top of the source file window all the way down to the bottom of  
>> the screen.
>>
>> - Having a large screen I would prefer a larger popup window.  
>> Maybe the two dimensions can be user defined as well as the  
>> position of the top left corner (close but not identical to the  
>> top left corner of the screen/source file window) or (my preferred  
>> choice) the top right corner (close but not identical to the top  
>> right corner of the screen/source file window).

Both of these are really out of my control, without completely  
rewriting Apple's autocomplete mechanism and replacing it using some  
nasty hacks.  I don't want to do that, since loading my code into  
someone else's program is a risky proposition at best, and right now  
it's limited to swizzling a couple of methods.

> If the open window is near the bottom of the screen and there are  
> just enough items brought up in the list so the end of the list (~5  
> items) is out of view there still are no scroll arrows or scroll  
> bar. I can still scroll using the arrow keys and see the item in  
> the substitution display so it isn't as though I can't get to the  
> items.

Apple says this is a known bug with their completion window, so  
hopefully they fix it.  If it bothers anyone else, file a bug report  
at http://bugreport.apple.com/ and vote for your favorite bug.

> Now here's a bigger one! It would be neat if the first time you use  
> the substitution it would search for a \bibliography command and  
> open that .bib file in BibDesk. That would save me the time of  
> setting that as the default for BibDesk or opening that .bib file  
> in BibDesk before starting the editing.

I thought about that at one point, for finding \labels in \included  
files, but there's no way to get the present working directory from a  
text view, so it would break unless you used an absolute path.

> If there are folks out there not using the neat citation  
> substitution available with BibDesk they should try it! Very Neat!

Thanks :).  By the way, it works with any Cocoa text editor  
(TextEdit, Xcode, OmniOutliner) as well as the Cocoa TeX IDEs.

Adam
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