[Vim-latex-devel] Review of vim-latex status

[Srinath A. <sr...@fa...>]

Hello,

Its been quite a hectic coding time in the vim-latex project and its
time to step back and take note of all the things which we did/will do.

Things which were improved
==========================
1. imaps.vim: This was simplified by BF and also we think we have solved
   the encoding issues as far as we can tell. For me, on win32 and on
   some tests on unix machine, the current version just works.

2. Compilation: Carl Mueller's suggestion led to a pretty nifty compiler
   program which syns the quickfix window with the log preview window
   providing the advantages of both the quickfix window by allowing you
   to jump and get a quick overview of all errors while providing more
   detailed descriptions of each error via the log window.

3. The packages.vim file was robustified. This has not yet been commited
   to the main branch because I am still waiting to hear from Mikolaj.
   Actually, not too many changes were made. Just the menu creating code
   was changed and a function Tex_MakeSubMenu was extracted which will
   be used in other parts of latex-suite in the future.

4. Mikolaj added many new packages. Latex-suite now supports 38
   packages! Support for the amsmath package is really excellent.

5. A _lot_ of bugfixes happened since the last release.

Things which need to improve
============================
1. Atleast for me, the diacritics have been a longstanding source of
   annoyance at unexpected times. Everytime I try doing a=b, I get
   a\'{b}. And assignments like a=b are so common that this becomes
   painful pretty fast. I would love to find out a better way to
   implement support for diacritics. I am in fact thinking of disabling
   diacritics by default unless we get some better ideas.

2. This is as of now, poor documentation at various places. Often times,
   the script file contains documentation, whereas it should be in a
   doc/.txt file (in the case of imaps.vim). Sometimes, documentation is
   just plain missing (in the case of bibtex.vim). I suspect that there
   are quite a few features of latex-suite even I dont know about.
   Especially in the case of bibtex.vim, the lack of documentation and
   menu items etc leads it to be completeley lost to the end-user.
   Latex-suite really needs some time spent on documentation.

3. There are still 'funky' characters in various places of latex-suite
   leading to internationalization issues.

4. Some of the maps do not check for hasmapto(rhs) and mapcheck(lhs)
   before mapping. This needs to change.

Future Directions
=================
These are things which are on my "cool things to do" list. Please feel
free to share your own.

1. Dependency checking: i.e, when the user chooses the 'pdf' format,
   latex-suite automatically compiles the dvi file, converts to ps and
   then to pdf according to user preferences. I know that lh-tex (by
   Luc) already has these kind of things implemented. But from what I
   can see, he has hardcoded the dependencies, i.e pdf always follows
   from ps and things like that. I would think that we could have
   options like
	   Tex_FormatDepenency_pdf = 'ps'
	   Tex_FormatDepenency_ps = 'dvi'
	   Tex_FormatDepenency_dvi = 'tex'
   which enable a customized dependency setting. I propose that we have
   a discussion about the best way to implement this. (Luc can start by
   telling us how he did it). We could then come up with an framework we
   all agree on and then implement it in a manner consistent with
   latex-suite. Since this is (will be) such a core part of latex-suite,
   I would like this to be implemented after a lot of thought.

2. Compilation Sequence: Again, Luc has implemented a way to run latex,
   bibtex, makeindex etc according to what needs to be run etc. This too
   needs to be part of latex-suite. Again, I would think we should
   discuss this and then implement. Again, it will be a core part. For
   both points 1 and 2, we should I think come up with an empty vim file
   containing just funciton prototypes and documentation which we all
   agree on. After that, we will implement it.

3. New developer: Becase Luc has implemented both 2 and 3 in lh-tex, I
   propose that we get Luc into the developer team if he wants. To start
   with, he can implement his ideas on a seperate branch. Afterwards, we
   can merge this into the main trunk.

4. Citation browser: I know that auctex from emacs has a feature where
   it sets up a browsable window of the citations found in the bibtex
   file. We could implement a system where if the user presses <Alt-c>,
   \cite{} is inserted and the browser comes up asking him to choose a
   citation.

5. Removal of unwanted cruft: I am pretty sure latex-suite has features
   which it can afford to lose.

Happy Holidays!!! (My girlfriend is dragging me off to some shopping
now)

Srinath