[Vim-latex-devel] Re: [Vim-latex-cvs] A little review...

[Benji F. <be...@me...>]

Srinath Avadhanula wrote:
> ... of the large number of changes I made recently.
> 
> The initial way latex-suite used to get triggered was:
> 
> 1. tex_latexSuite.vim would get sourced everytime.
> 2. It would source main.vim once for every buffer.
> 3. The first time it was sourced, main.vim would source each of the
>    other files and from the second time on, just call SetTeXOptions().
>    Components which needed to set buffer local mappings would create
>    globally visible functions which SetTeXOptions() would need to call.
> 
> This had one obvious flaw because of point 2.
> 
> It doesn't work with components which needed to do something every time
> we entered a buffer irrespective of whether its the first or the n^th
> time.  For example, its not possible to write elegantly the
> functionality where the packages menu gets updated on every Filetype
> event. For example, if we do something like:
> 1. open a.tex
> 2. :e b.tex
> 3. :e a.tex
> 
> in the original setup, hen after step 3, the packages menu would still
> show the stuff for b.tex...
> 
> Apart from this obvious flaw which could have been solved with a little
> less effort, from a "do the right thing" point of view, it was just
> plainly bad design. There is too much inter dependency between the
> various modules, which means main.vim would need to be modified every
> time we wanted to change some other module.
> 
> It might seem that one way to avoid interdependencies would have been to
> reduce tex_latexSuite.vim to:
> 
> execute 'so '.s:path.'/latex-suite/*.vim'
> 
> This is however not possible because we want to source the files in a
> certain order.
> 
> There are ofcourse more obvious ways to overcome this problem. (like the
> brute force way of just making package/babel scan for whether the user
> uses babel with the 'german' option), but I think the present setup is
> the most scalable.
> 
> Let me know if what I've done is not too clear or if you have other
> concerns.
> 
> In summary, what I have done makes latex-suite behave like:
> 
> 1. tex_latexSuite.vim gets sourced by vim every time a tex filetype
>    event occurs.
> 2. It sources main.vim only once. _never again_
> 3. It then just throws a LatexSuiteFileType event every time (including
>    the first time).
> 
> When main.vim gets sourced, it:
> 
> 1. Sources each file in some nice order.
> 2. Sets up an au to catch the LatexSuiteFileType event to call
>    SetTeXOptions() each time. Thus buffer local mappings are created for
>    each tex file being edited.
> 
> Other files which also need to set buffer local mappings follow the same
> procedure.
> 
> packages.vim however does something extra
> 
> 1. It sets up an au to call Tex_pack_updateall() on every
>    LatexSuiteFileType event (which means it gets called for every buffer
>    every time).
> 2. Tex_pack_updateall throws a LatexSuitePackagesScanned event after it
>    is done "supporting" all the \usepackage's found.
> 
> 
> Finally, packages/babel catches the LatexSuitePackagesScanned event to
> customize the smart quotes setting.
> 
> So to summarize, after about 5 hours of coding, I have a system which
> enables german users to edit both english and german files in the same
> vim session using some pretty nifty event handling mechanisms. I am
> absolutely sure that not more than about 1 person will find this useful.
> Ho well, if I was concerned with the value of my time, I wouldn't have
> started this thing in the first place... Besides, my meeting tomorrow
> got postponed, so I went a little overboard. I think this "little"
> programming binge has eaten up my quota for the coming week :(
> 
> Hopefully, we will have some use for all this flexibity in the future.
> 
> 
> Srinath

      I redirected this from Vim-latex-cvs to Vim-latex-devel .

      I think this is going to be helpful in the long run.  In the short 
run, I am afraid that the whle system may be unstable for a while.  I 
would have started a new branch for this.

      We should document how the system works.  Parts of your e-mail, 
quoted above, can serve as a draft.  See

:help syntax-loading

for one model.

      The rest of my comments are pretty minor.

      You did not (yet) take my suggestion about packages/german-babel 
and so on.  Is this because you did not like the idea, or just because 
you had a lot of other things on your mind?  Again, the point is that 
packages/german does nothing more than set smart-quote options, but (1) 
this may change and (2) polski already does much more.

      If you have already declared

:augroup LatexSuite

then you do not have to include LatexSuite (the augroup) in the :au 
lines.  I find it easier to read without this repetition.  Do you 
disagree, or were you just following the cvs plugin model?

      If "ngerman" is given as an option to the babel package, then the 
"german" package will be :source'd.  This will work fine.  Do we want it 
to work this way in general?  I think there are (at least) two versions 
of french; can they also be treated the same way?  I would rather parse 
g:Tex_babel_options and, for each option given (Is it legal to give more 
than one?) :source the appropriate file if it exists.

      What is the format of the g:Tex_package_detected and 
g:Tex_{pack}_options variables?  If it is something like "pack1,pack2", 
then it is pretty easy to parse; in particular, your match with 
'\<babel\>' should work reliably.

					--Benji