[Vim-latex-devel] LaTeX help for Vim

[Peter K. <pe...@ka...>]

[regarding http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/ ]

Hi,

quite some time ago I e-mailed with Mikolaj Machowski about LaTeX-help for
Vim. Mikolaj told me about your Vim-Latex Suite, but I lost contact, =
mainly
due limited time during the time I was writing my diploma thesis.

I don't know if any of you is aware of the additions I've made to =
Mikolaj's
LaTeXhelp. I added some stuff, I missed while writing latex documents. You
can grab that updated copy of LaTeX-help at my homepage:

    www.karpfenteich.net

I began that work as a personal "project", just to help me writing latex
stuff. As I noticed that this would be beneficial for other LaTeX/Vim =
users
I posted the uncompleted but already somewhat enlarged version on my
homepage. I have been looking for people willing to contribute, but nobody
seemed to have interest/time/fun/whatever. I got two or three e-mails, but
none of them stayed at the project or even began... :-(

Then I got in contact with Michael Wiedmann who earlier had suggested that
adding content in the Vim specific file format might not be the best idea,
as non-Vim users won't benefit (at least that another "special" conversion
process would be needed). Sure I agreed, but had no better idea for a
source format _and_ most important didn't had the time during the diplom
thesis to learn a new markup language, _just_ to add some missing latex
commands to the help file. Therefore I took the easiest way to improve =
upon
Mikolaj's file.

But after I announced the updated LaTeXhelp file Michael contacted me =
again
and already had begun to work on a translation from the orginal texinfo
files to an XML source!

BTW, such a LaTeX reference is highly needed. In a few days nearly
twothousand people visited my homepage and downloaded the LaTeXhelp =
(either
in Vim help format or as HTML). I just had an announcement on the german
and the international latex newsgroup, so I'm sure that the demand for =
such
a LaTeX reference is high!

Back to Michael. He kept improving the translation process to XML and
finally added my changes/improvements from the LaTeXhelp file for the Vim
help. From then on he maintained the XML sources and added more content. I
personally would have liked to contribute more content (for example for =
the
excellent Koma script or for AMS math stuff). That has been some months =
ago
now and Michal still is keeping on improving the XML source (technically
and adding content). BTW, currently the output formats he generates are
pdf, html, rtf, winhelp and others.

I finished my diploma thesis and thought I'd now have time, but must admit
that looking for a job and improving my knowledge in my field takes most =
of
my time. Still I _would_ have contributed more content to the LaTeXhelp
(which we named tex-refs to show that the aim is to provide a reference =
for
TeX and friends and that it's "more" then the original LaTeX help"), =
_when_
two conditions would have been met:

    1) I need to be able to understand the XML structure and add content
    easy. That was the major problem. I'm still looking for a good
    solution to help me editing the XML source. I must admit that I don't
    find it that easy to take care of the tags. Maybe a "tag list" which
    is allowed in the document would get me going, but I didn't took the
    time to make such a list or even write Vim macros to aid maintaining
    the XML source.
    
    2) Another reason that dramaticly made my wish to improve on that XML
    source file smaller is that up till now no conversion from XML to the
    Vim help file format exists and in the end that's what I want to have.

I only have basic experience with Vim macros and have not been able to =
come
up with a solution myself (at least not in the time span which I could =
have
"afforded" at that moment). Therefore I was looking for a volunteer to =
help
us to write a conversion routine from XML to the Vim help format. We would
be happy about _every_ solution. Perl, XSLT, Vim macros, awk or other
solutions would be a good way to go.

I personally think that a Vim macro might be the most natural way, because
every Vim user who wants the LaTeX help for Vim will surely have Vim ;-)
This approach would allow a user to add personal content to the XML file
and generate a LaTeX help file, where one also could add the descriptions
for personal defined latex macros and so on.

My second best solution would be using awk or Perl, because that's
available on every platform and (especially awk) is easy to install.

Michael would prefer an XSLT solution, because that's what _he_ uses for
the conversion of the other formats. Sure that's also logic. My qualms are
that an XSLT solution would not give as many people the chance to do the
translations for themselfs, because the XSLT setup is much more complex
(with makefiles and so on), then using a plain Vim, awk or perl macro. I'm
(at least now) on a Win32 platform and as I understood Michael the =
XML/XSLT
tools are not all available for the win platform. Also it still would need
bigger efforts to get a running XSLT setup then using one of the other
scripting languages.

So here's my suggestion:

Provide the already existent expanded LaTeXhelp file from my homepage with
the Vim LaTeX-Suite

and even better take a look at the current state of TeX-Refs at:

    http://www.miwie.org/tex-refs/

and see what you/we/all LaTeX/Vim users miss, when we don't have a
conversion between XML and the Vim help format.

When time permits I'll try to write a Vim macro to do the conversion, but
don't hold your breath as I have other projects which are more important
right now (I also don't use LaTeX that much these days...)

When one of you would like to contribute in form of writing a Vim macro =
(or
any other solution mentioned or even a Basic program or one in Assembler
;-) we surely would like to hear from you and the TeX-Refs project and the
LaTeX-Suite would fructify each other.

I'm looking forward to hear your ideas and opinions.

Regards
Peter