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

[Luc H. <her...@fr...>]

Hello,

* On Fri, Dec 27, 2002 at 11:58:10AM -0800, Srinath Avadhanula <sr...@fa...> wrote:
> Your scheme seems quite excellent! I think the latter suggestion of
> making specific functions such as Tex_Convert_{from}_to_{to} and then
> calling these from a central Tex_Compile() function (the dependency
> engine) which uses options such as:
> 
> " Dependency definitions
> " for tex -> dvi -> ps -> pdf
> g:Tex_dvi_dependsOn = 'tex'
> g:Tex_ps_dependsOn = 'dvi'
> g:Tex_pdf_dependsOn = 'ps'
> " Compilation rules.
> g:Tex_CompileRule_dvi = 'latex \nonstopmode \input{$*}'
> g:Tex_CompileRule_ps = 'dvips -Ppdf $*'
> g:Tex_CompileRule_pdf = 'ps2pdf $*'

Hum ... If we adopt this approach (with a dependency engine), then the
compilation rules should be named regarding the source format as well.
Ie: we should have:
  g:Tex_CompileRule_ps2pdf  = 'ps2pdf $*'
and
  g:Tex_CompileRule_tex2pdf = 'pdflatex \nonstopmode \input{$*}'

BTW: the dependency engine should allow us to have an open system. For
instance, we could add a support for Tex4HT.

The last thing to "study" is how we will run/call this dependency
engine.

> is the best way to go... The Tex_Convert_tex_to_dvi and
> Tex_Convert_tex_to_pdf can both use another function Tex_Convert_tex
> with a few changed options... 

You're right. It will be neater (/more neat ?) than my current code.
I was first skeptical about the dependency engine. Now I think it should
not be so complex to implement.

> Maybe I will get around to it when I next get time... As of now, I am
> still fixing little bugs here and there... If you are interested, you
> could get access to our CVS treee...

May be the easiest thing to do is to start from the current code in
tex-tools.vim.
Moreover, it supports a little more advanced scheme regarding the way
the main latex file is specified (ie: it supports both your way and
Tomer's way ; and personnally, I prefer Tomer one's ;-)).
tex-tools.vim does also try to take care of many oddities like how to
detect that a :make failed, etc. But there are also unsolved (at least,
I am not satisfied by my workarounds) issues like :grep from win32-vim
launch from cygwin.

> On Thu, 26 Dec 2002, Luc Hermitte wrote:
> > 6. Sometimes, I'd like some feedback about the last improvments I
> >    made in mu-template. But before, I must found some time to finish
> >    to write the documentation and to definitively fix the
> >    funky-characters issue.  The big last improvment concerns the
> >    possibility to hit for instance: '\tab^R<SPACE>' which pops up a
> >    dialog box asking for which template-file we wish to expand
> >    (here: tabular, tabeqnarray, etc)
> 
> Well, as of now latex-suite does this in 2 ways. 
> - [.. auctex's way ..]

I do know it. But I found this way hard to configure to one's
preferences.

> - It also supports "custom macros". These are basically files in the
> latex-suite/macros/ directory. Your feature could be implemented as:
> inoremap <C-x>t    <C-r>=Tex_ReadCustomMacro()<CR>
> 
> This pops up a prompt asking the user to choose from the files found
> in the macros/ directory and asks the user to choose one. This is then
> read in. The file can contain optional placeholders etc...

If I remember well, this second way uses an earlier (and official)
version of mu-template.
I have added many things since the last official release. Moreover, it
is not limited to LaTeX.

-- 
Luc Hermitte
http://hermitte.free.fr/vim/