[OS X TeX] Feature request on TeXShop's "Experiment" mechanism

[Michael Sharpe]

> On May 27, 2015, at 3:05 PM, Josep Maria Font <jmfont at ub.edu> wrote:
> 
> I am finding TeXShop's "Experiment" device really useful, and I think it would be even more so if the following feature was added:
> 
> That one can save the result (i.e., the typeset, not the source) of the experiment, somehow, as a file for independent usage.
> 
> I think that as of now this is not possible (while it is, in the ordinary typeset). Besides experimenting before inclusion in the current document, I also use "Experiment" in order to typeset text and formulas for independent usage, using all the (many!) macros defined in the current document. This is very practical. Often one would like to save the result, to keep it, to send it to other people, etc. This could be done by either saving the typeset window as an ordinary PDF, or by selecting a rectangle with the selection tool of the ordinary typeset window, and dragging it to the desktop, which would create a file of the kind set in Preferences > Copy (i.e., PDF, JPEG, etc.). For the moment, I take a snapshot of a rectangle of the screen with command-caps-4.
> 
> I have no idea whether this is really feasible or not.
> 

This would not be hard to do with an AppleScript macro, as TeXShop does "experiments" by constructing file.tex and the corresponding file.pdf in a subfolder of your temporary folder, the precise path being reported in the "file console" window, and one could simply copy those (or just the .pdf) to any location where you have permission to write.

Michael