[OS X TeX] Adding menu item and shortcut to TeXShop

[Kirk Lowery]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Jonathan Kew <jonathan at jfkew.plus.com> wrote:
> On 15 Feb 2009, at 15:16, Kirk Lowery wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa at web.de>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 15.02.2009 um 14:28 schrieb Kirk Lowery:
>>>
>>>> So, to start with, is it possible to add a menu item to TeXShop's
>>>> default
>>>> menus?
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it's done with ENGINE files. You can put them into
>>> ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines. TeXShop, at least newer versions, come with
>>> XeTeX.engine and XeLaTeX.engine in
>>> </path/to/>TeXShop.app/Contents/Resources/TeXShop/Engines. More examples
>>> are
>>> in </path/to/>TeXShop.app/Contents/Resources/TeXShop/Engines/Inactive.
>>
>> Yes, indeed. My version is up to date. And the XeLaTeX engine is
>> there. But if you go to the top menu item "Typeset" you will not find
>> it there. On the window toolbar, there is a dropdown box and I find
>> XeLaTeX there. But I still cannot set a shortcut key for it. That's my
>> goal.
>
> I don't know of an easy way to achieve this, but do you really need it? If
> you use a suitable "%%!TEX TS-program = xelatex" line in your source, to
> ensure that this engine is used, then you can simply use the Typeset
> shortcut. I wouldn't have thought there are many situations where you'd want
> to be continually switching back and forth between using xelatex and another
> engine, so using the TeXShop comment to choose the engine is usually the
> simplest and most reliable approach.
>
> JK

Well, when I have a document with bibtex or biblatex citations, I have
to run bibtex a lot. The key shortcut is nice, cmd-shift-B. But then I
have to move from the keyboard to the mouse or touchpad to click on
the dropdown box, select XeLaTeX, and then either click "Typeset" or
cmd-t. I write documents with lots of citations, so it would speed
matters up and allow my hands to remain on the keyboard.

Well, this is the situation I was afraid was the case. Okay, feature
request! ;-)

Thanks to all who responded.

Kirk