[toolbox] Introduction

[Kevin W. <sw...@wo...>]

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Hello,

Just writing to introduce myself. I'm a sometimes poster on the regular
Mac-TeX mailing list, a regular user of LaTeX for documenting my
software projects, and someone who would like to give something back to
the Mac-LaTeX community by helping to develop a few useful tools.

I have two projects that may be of interest, though I don't know where
they would fit in--perhaps others could offer some feedback.

1. AquaTkbibtex, which is designed to be a fully Aquified version of
tkbibtex. Last year I released a primitive version of this port, which
involved an AppleScript launcher utility and tkbibtex itself.
Double-clicking a bib file would launch tkbibtex via the AS launcher. I
am not sure how much of a user base this tool got, as it generated a
little interest on the Mac-TeX list and then evaporated.

More recently I've completed a fully aquified version of this program--I
dropped the AppleScript, packaged tkbibtex as a standalone app that
responds to drag-and-drop of bib files, and actually refactored a lot of
the tkbibtex code to make it more Mac-friendly in appearance and
behavior. The announcement of a beta version on Mac-TeX last month
about a dozen downloads and no feedback. Still, since the work is done
and it seeems to run fine, I'd like to release it anyway, even if the
user base isn't huge. (I'm thinking about targeting LyX-Mac users as
that program has tight integration wtih tkbibtex.)

2.  An as-yet-incomplete tool that I'm tentatively calling
latex2applehelp. Basically this involves some basic modifications to
latex2html that I've made to provide more attractive output
(specifically the navigation icons). When I write user help, I author in
LaTeX, output to PDF, then convert to HTML via latex2html, and then use
another script to add Apple Help tags to the HTML output.  (I prefer
latex2html over htlatex because it provides a cleaner navigation
structure.) The basic idea is that, after some refinement, I will
release my modifications to latex2html as a pkg installer, and then use
a GUI to configure the output. If you want to see some sample output
from this process, look at the Apple Help for Aquamacs--I developed this
~ tool in the process of creating the Aquamacs help docs.

Any suggestions/ideas/feedback about either of these projects are
welcome. Looking forward to working with you all!

- --
Cheers,

Kevin Walzer, PhD
WordTech Software--Open Source Applications and Packages for OS X
http://www.wordtech-software.com
http://www.kevin-walzer.com
http://www.smallbizmac.com.
mailto:sw...@wo...
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