[OS X TeX] Experience with TeXnicle?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jan 28, 2012, at 2:22 PM, Enrico Franconi wrote:

>>>> I find the user experience in TeXnicle quite crude, lacking the elegance and the focus on tasks and the effectiveness of Latexian.
>>>> No live preview (but a "LaTeX" button), logs running in front of your eyes,
>>> 
>>> I like the log running in front of my eyes. 
>>> And using the insert field to interactively fix small edits.
>>> This has always been an important, but under-used feature of TeX,
>>> from even before GUIs were invented.
>>> 
>>> Maybe I'm just showing my age.
>> 
>> Ha! That's why I like to watch TeXShop's Console window while typesetting. I'm pretty old! :-)
> 
> Come on, dudes!
> Having a red exclamation point in the left gutter on each line with a LaTeX error, which then is explained by hovering the mouse over it is too cool! Perhaps *I*'m showing my age :-)
> Since the latexing is happening continuously under the hood with a live preview, the only part of the log you need are the errors, which are appropriately shown in place, where you can the find the way to fix them.
> --e.

Howdy,

One thing (of several) that keeps me from trying out Latexian has to do with the processing. It appears that you are restricted to latex (tex->dvi->ps->dpf), pdflatex (tex->pdf) and xetex (tex->xdv->pdf --- intermediate step transparent) with possible runs of bibtex and/or makeindex in between. There is no way to actually create new engines that use latexmk, automate processing of files the use biber rather than bibtex, properly process files which create multiple bibliographies or indexes, etc. That's a real deal breaker for me.

By the way TeXShop has a Go To Error button on the Console window that allows you to go to the position in the source file that contains the error. It also allows you to jump to different sections, etc., although it doesn't do code folding.

Probably the most interesting thing I see in Latexian is the way it seems to deal with projects with multiple input files, etc. But the vast majority of the documents I deal with are single file (well, with possible graphics added).

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)