vim-latex-devel — Mailing list for developers/maintainers of the vim-latex project

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

Hey Luc,

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Luc Hermitte wrote:

> The tool XT is available on: http://www.blnz.com/xt
> For other tools, check the FAQ::Where To Start::Implementations.
>
> I like the FAQ available on: http://www.dpawson.co.uk/
> It is about XSLT and XSL:fo. It helped me a lot with typical xslt
> constructs.
>
> There is a reference documentation and some nice trivial examples (kind
> of tutorial) on: http://www.zvon.org/
> (and many, many other things)
>

Thanks for the valuable links... I have been going through them in my
spare time... Unfortunately, I am beginning to think that its quite
non-trivial to do something like this what we want in xslt... Maybe
after more reading, that will change...

I am beginning to get more and more inclinded to go the python path and
write our own little xml2vim converter... What do you think?

This weekend, I was looking at the xml.dom.minidom documentation in
python and the helpful example there.

I could modify it without too much effort and came up with the attached
.py file... Run it as
$ python options.py

Note that althout it has 113 lines, the code which I actually wrote was
about 17 lines. The rest I got from a google search for "paragraph
indentation python".

Obviously, this was just done on a whim. Do you think this is a good way
to proceed? Or should I (or Benji) be better off learning xslt?

Thanks,

Srinath

PS: It converts

-----------------------------------%<-----------------------------------
<option>
<name>Tex_Leader</name>
<desc>
The mappings in latex-suite are by default prefixed with the back-tick
character. For example, `/ inserts \frac{&lt;++&gt;}{&lt;++&gt;}&lt;++&gt; etc.
You can change the
prefix with the following setting.
',', '/', '`' are preferred values. '' or '\' will lead to a _lot_ of
trouble.

g:Tex_Leader is also used for visual mode mappings for fonts.
</desc>
</option>
-----------------------------------%<-----------------------------------

to

----------------------------------%<----------------------------------
                                                          *Tex_Leader*

Tex_Leader

                    The mappings in latex-suite are by default
                    prefixed with the back-tick character. For
                    example, `/ inserts \frac{<++>}{<++>}<++> etc. You
                    can change the prefix with the following setting.
                    ',', '/', '`' are preferred values. '' or '\' will
                    lead to a _lot_ of trouble.

                    g:Tex_Leader is also used for visual mode mappings
                    for fonts.
----------------------------------%<----------------------------------

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] packages.vim

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

Hey Deigo,

I have incorporated both fixes into the latest version of latex-suite.
Right now if you press EFI in a file which has \usepackage{graphicx}, it
expands to:

\begin{figure}[<+htpb+>]
	\begin{center}
		\includegraphics{<+file+>}
	\end{center}
	\caption{<+caption text+>}
	\label{fig:<+label+>}
\end{figure}<++>

Let me know if thats what you meant.
I also fixed the \includegraphics syntax.

Thanks!

Srinath


-- 
Srinath Avadhanula
Jan 21 2:23pm
In the beginning was the word.
But by the time the second word was added to it,
there was trouble.
For with it came syntax ...
		-- John Simon

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] packages.vim

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

Hey Diego,

Thanks for the valuable feedback!

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Diego Caraffini wrote:

> \includegraphics[]{}{}
>
> [snip]
>
> \includegraphics[]{}
>
> [snip]
>
> so that you do not end up with increasing length command specifications
> (ex. CommandSpec_noobbb).
>
> I hope this can be useful.
>
I think the problem was not with packages.vim but with
packages/graphicx. You'll notice that in packages/grapchicx we define
g:Tex_package_grapchicx to contain 'nob:includegraphics'. The problem
can be solved if we make it 'brs:includegraphics[<++>]{<++>}'

> \usepackage[options]{graphicx}
>
> EFI will use the \includegraphics command instead of the default  \psfig
> ?
> Or it is alredy possible?

The basic mechanism to accomplish this is there... I will make a patch
to accomplish this behavior today... I'll let you know when its ready.

Thanks,

Srinath

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Your compiler/tex.vim plugin

[Artem C. <ra...@ra...>]

On 2003.01.20 at 10:35:49 -0800, Srinath Avadhanula wrote:

> > I hope that this compiler was in vim not so much time that this is an issue.
> > But I know many people who use old emTeX under Win32. So I am going to support
> > \nonstopmode as a fallback for them, but I need to resolve backslash escaping
> > issues.
> >
> Hmm... If you are going to have to support escape backslashing, then you
> might as well support only that since all compilers accept that syntax
> as best as I know...

First, I cannot guarantee that I'll succeed in this backslash escaping.
Second, backslash syntax prevents from specifying any other options for TeX
through :make while commandline syntax allows.
Maybe "second" is indeed "first".
So I am going to fallback to this syntax (by user's variable setting) on his
own risk, not as a reliable solution.

[skip!]

I'll read the skipped carefully but not at late night...

> > Both are rare. Ancient TeX with vim 6.1 seems to be more rare.
> >
> I do not think cygwin is too rare. If its not cygwin, then its some
> other winutils kind of a shell...

But does it is the UNIX-like or Windows native shell that is the specified (or
unspecified :-)) in user's Vim configuration? Moreover, I think that UNIX-like
utilities on Windows is even more marginal than UNIX itself. But I do not
think that they are ignorably rare, because _I_ use them when I need to work
with Windows :-)

> On windows cygwin provides a great
> terminal and all the familiar unix tools.

Yes... If it could also support Russian well enough...

> Artem:
> You are welcome to join the mailing list:
>     http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vim-latex-devel
> If you wish, take a look at the archives to get an idea of the activity
> level.

Thank you.

-- 
Sorry for my English,
Artem Chuprina (Ran)
RFC2822: <ra...@ra...>, FIDO: 2:5020/358.49

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Your compiler/tex.vim plugin

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

Hello,

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Artem Chuprina wrote:

> >      Just yesterday, I updated teTeX on my Linux system, with the
> > latest RPM's from Red Hat, and now tex understands the -interaction
> > option.  I still think that a lot of people are using older
> > distributions of tex.  It has been a long time since there was an
> > official release of teTeX.  True, a lot of people have switched to the
> > beta version, which supportsd this option; in fact, I am not sure which
> > version is in the RPM I downloaded.  If this is the only place where
> > escaping backslashes is an issue, and that is still causing problems,
> > then it is a judgment call.
> >
> >      For someone using an old version of tex, how hard will it be to
> > fix the problem if the default is changed?
>
> I hope that this compiler was in vim not so much time that this is an issue.
> But I know many people who use old emTeX under Win32. So I am going to support
> \nonstopmode as a fallback for them, but I need to resolve backslash escaping
> issues.
>
Hmm... If you are going to have to support escape backslashing, then you
might as well support only that since all compilers accept that syntax
as best as I know...

As far as escape backslashing goes, although the compiler in latex-suite
tries to do a fair bit of guessing, it still fails in the situation
where cygwin is used in a win32 environment.

You can see the latest compiler/tex.vim for latex-suite at:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/vim-latex/vimfiles/compiler/tex.vim

And how to hack around the second issue at:

http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/index.php?subject=faq#faq-2

I think that we could have improved the guesswork if we had somehow
detected whether 'shellquote' was " or '

What happens in win32 is:

- if &shell='' then cmd.exe is used and things should be called like:

    cmd.exe /c latex \nonstopmode \input{$*}

  This is because cmd.exe doesn't see \ as an escape character and it is
  passed verbatim to latex.

- if &shell=bash, then vim guesses &shellquote = '"', so that things
  need to be called like:

    bash -c "latex \\\\nonstopmode \\\\input\\{$*\\}

  Somehow there are 2 levels of escaping before this finally gets to
  latex. I know that bash will do one level. I do not know what does the
  second... (is it vim itself?)

So just to be complete, I think we'll need to also check for &shellquote
in addition to &shell. See
    :help dos-shell
for all the gory details. I might spend a little more time on this next
time I get a chance.

Ofcourse, if we just use the --interaction sytnax, we instantly take
care of all these problems. Also, in the standard compiler/tex.vim it
might be a good idea to provide an option to let the use specify the
complete command line for calling the compiler.

>
> Both are rare. Ancient TeX with vim 6.1 seems to be more rare.
>
I do not think cygwin is too rare. If its not cygwin, then its some
other winutils kind of a shell... On windows cygwin provides a great
terminal and all the familiar unix tools.

Artem:
You are welcome to join the mailing list:
    http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vim-latex-devel
If you wish, take a look at the archives to get an idea of the activity
level.

Srinath

[Vim-latex-devel] packages.vim

[Diego C. <die...@pg...>]

I checked out LaTeX-Suite and I think it is really great, but when i
tried to insert the \includegraphics command from the menu' it was like
this 

\includegraphics[]{}{}

but this syntax refers to the graphics package, while this command has
only one mandatory argument in the package graphicx 

\includegraphics[]{}


(check this url http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~clyde/latex.html for a brief
manual of both ) 

In the end I tracked the origin of this to be in 
the following line of file packages.vim

let s:CommandSpec_nob = '\<+replace+>[<++>]{<++>}{<++>}<++>'

which defines the nob prefix as the keyword followed by 1 optional and 2
mandatory arguments and as long as I can see it is not envisaged the
possibility of only one mandatory arg. If I am right this can generate
inconsistencies, so why not using 

let s:CommandSpec_nob = '\<+replace+>[<++>]{<++>}<++>'

and

let s:CommandSpec_nobb = '\<+replace+>[<++>]{<++>}{<++>}<++>'

with the number of 'b' matching the number of mandatory arguments?

or alternatively you can quote the number of arguments like this

let s:CommandSpec_no2b2 = '\<+replace+>[<++>][<++>]{<++>}{<++>}<++>'

so that you do not end up with increasing length command specifications
(ex. CommandSpec_noobbb).

I hope this can be useful.

By the way if one loads a package then it is likely to use its commands,
so I am wondering if it is feasible to  make the three letter  shortcuts
sensitive to the loaded packages in such a way that after loading for
example 

\usepackage[options]{graphicx}

EFI will use the \includegraphics command instead of the default  \psfig
?
Or it is alredy possible?
If not I think it would be a big enhancement.

Thanks for your time.
-- 
Diego Caraffini <die...@pg...>

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Your compiler/tex.vim plugin

[Artem C. <ra...@ra...>]

On 2003.01.20 at 09:01:56 -0500, Benji Fisher wrote:

> >>SA> also, another thing which you might want to do in your makeprg setting
> >>SA> is the following:
> >>
> >>SA> if has('win32')
> >>SA> 	set &makeprg = 'latex -interaction=nonstopmode $*'
> >>SA> endif
> >>
> >>SA> this is how miktex likes it.
> >>
> >>Well, I discovered that teTeX likes this too, so I changed makeprg to this
> >>version.
> >>
> >
> >This might be of quite a bit of interest to the vim-latex-devel people.
> >Benji was concerned that the -interaction=nonstopmode (I thought it was
> >--interaction but it looks like -interaction works too for miktex) will
> >break tex compilers and that the \\nonstopmode is a better alternative.
> >If it is true that most if not all latex compilers can handle
> >-interaction style syntax, it will take care of the old backslash
> >escaping problem once and for all..
> 
>      Just yesterday, I updated teTeX on my Linux system, with the 
> latest RPM's from Red Hat, and now tex understands the -interaction 
> option.  I still think that a lot of people are using older 
> distributions of tex.  It has been a long time since there was an 
> official release of teTeX.  True, a lot of people have switched to the 
> beta version, which supportsd this option; in fact, I am not sure which 
> version is in the RPM I downloaded.  If this is the only place where 
> escaping backslashes is an issue, and that is still causing problems, 
> then it is a judgment call.
> 
>      For someone using an old version of tex, how hard will it be to 
> fix the problem if the default is changed?

I hope that this compiler was in vim not so much time that this is an issue.
But I know many people who use old emTeX under Win32. So I am going to support
\nonstopmode as a fallback for them, but I need to resolve backslash escaping
issues.

> >>SA> yet another thingie which broke when i used it with bash/cygwin is 
> >>that
> >>SA> external programs get executed as following:
> >>
> >>SA>   !bash -c "latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}"
> >>
> >>why not
> >>
> >>!bash -c 'latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}'
> >
> >Yes... I guess I could have changed the value of shellquote. Vim guesses
> >'shellquote' to be " when I do :set shell=bash in my .vimrc...
> >
> >Srinath
> 
>      Is there any way to guess which is more common:  ancient versions 
> of tex or cygwin installations?

Both are rare. Ancient TeX with vim 6.1 seems to be more rare.

-- 
Artem Chuprina (Ran)
RFC2822: <ra...@ra...>, FIDO: 2:5020/358.49

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Your compiler/tex.vim plugin

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

Srinath Avadhanula wrote:
> Hello Artem,
> 
>>SA> also, another thing which you might want to do in your makeprg setting
>>SA> is the following:
>>
>>SA> if has('win32')
>>SA> 	set &makeprg = 'latex -interaction=nonstopmode $*'
>>SA> endif
>>
>>SA> this is how miktex likes it.
>>
>>Well, I discovered that teTeX likes this too, so I changed makeprg to this
>>version.
>>
> 
> This might be of quite a bit of interest to the vim-latex-devel people.
> Benji was concerned that the -interaction=nonstopmode (I thought it was
> --interaction but it looks like -interaction works too for miktex) will
> break tex compilers and that the \\nonstopmode is a better alternative.
> If it is true that most if not all latex compilers can handle
> -interaction style syntax, it will take care of the old backslash
> escaping problem once and for all..

      Just yesterday, I updated teTeX on my Linux system, with the 
latest RPM's from Red Hat, and now tex understands the -interaction 
option.  I still think that a lot of people are using older 
distributions of tex.  It has been a long time since there was an 
official release of teTeX.  True, a lot of people have switched to the 
beta version, which supportsd this option; in fact, I am not sure which 
version is in the RPM I downloaded.  If this is the only place where 
escaping backslashes is an issue, and that is still causing problems, 
then it is a judgment call.

      For someone using an old version of tex, how hard will it be to 
fix the problem if the default is changed?

>>SA> yet another thingie which broke when i used it with bash/cygwin is that
>>SA> external programs get executed as following:
>>
>>SA>   !bash -c "latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}"
>>
>>why not
>>
>>!bash -c 'latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}'
> 
> Yes... I guess I could have changed the value of shellquote. Vim guesses
> 'shellquote' to be " when I do :set shell=bash in my .vimrc...
> 
> Srinath

      Is there any way to guess which is more common:  ancient versions 
of tex or cygwin installations?

					--Benji

[Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

Hello,

* On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 03:50:12PM -0800, Srinath Avadhanula <sr...@fa...> wrote:
> > It you are interrested, I can search through my bookmarks the links
> > I got.
> 
> I am very interested... I didn't know much about xslt for instance. I
> was searching around on google today for xml and all I managed to get
> so far is a very very good introduction and no solid examples...

The tool XT is available on: http://www.blnz.com/xt
For other tools, check the FAQ::Where To Start::Implementations.

I like the FAQ available on: http://www.dpawson.co.uk/
It is about XSLT and XSL:fo. It helped me a lot with typical xslt
constructs.

There is a reference documentation and some nice trivial examples (kind
of tutorial) on: http://www.zvon.org/
(and many, many other things)


> Another question is how powerful something like xt is. Will it be able
> to generate vim help files which look somewhat like the present
> latex-suite.txt? Generating a vim help file is going to be tougher than
> generating an html file because in html we do not bother with paragraph
> width, indented paragraphs etc.

Hum. That is a very good question. I don't know. I'm also quite a newbye
in XML and XSLT. Checking on the FAQ ... yes! It is possible. The
solution seems quite complex, but it is possible (cf. FAQ::Plain Text
Outputs).


Personnally, I don't found XSLT as powerful as TeX is.
There are several things it can't do easilly or can't do at all --
that's were the FAQ is interresting.

BTW, there is an XML processor programmed in TeX by David Carlisle -- I
haven't tested it, but I think it worths mentionning it on this ML.

> What about generating a table of contentes automatically?

That is possible. Cf the FAQ again, and even the tutorials let us
imagine how to do it.


____
> > I use another way to produce html help file from vim help file. It
> > is based on awk scripts shipped with vim. It is not so bad.
> That sounds interesting too... Does that manage hyperlinking and color?

Hyperlinking yes, but colors no.
You should found the result of this convertion somewhere in my web site.
Probably on: http://hermitte.free.fr/vim/ressources/ VS_help.html
If not in vim/ressources/, it could be into vim/, or
vim/ressources/vimfiles/doc/.

> Another problem with the automated vim-html tools I've found so far is
> the indiscriminate cross-linking they do. For example, they link the has
> in a sentence "This package has the following features" to the
> has() function...

It also has this kind of problems. So, I avoid to use too generic tags
whenever I can.

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

[Vim-latex-devel] Re: Your compiler/tex.vim plugin

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

Hello Artem,

I am forwarding this to the vim-latex-devel group also because it is of
interest.

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003, Artem Chuprina wrote:

> SA> i found out that the %f flag actually looks for a valid file, i.e if its
> SA> not readable then it doesnt match. therefore the 'haha' thingie broke
> SA> the parsing. however, sometimes things like this do happen in actual
> SA> compilation:
>
> SA> [10] (file1 (badness 1000) file3 (
>
> For badness such a message is impossible, because it is always a part of
> underfull warning message. But I tried to fit other such possibilities
> (actually unknown for me). Diff is attached. I'll send it to Bram after a
> little more testing, so I'll thank you if you test this patch too and send me
> a bugreport if you find bugs.
>
> SA> where the badness warnings occur because of improber \hbox placements.
> SA> the following simple thing therefore seems to work around the problem:
>
> SA> > 1   \%+O(%f)%r,
>
> SA> %O(%*[^()])%r
>
> as is this does not help, because in this situation it was not this O who eats
> closing parenthesis (line does not begin with opening parenthesis, so O does
> not match). See the diff.
>
Thanks! I will test this.

> SA> also, another thing which you might want to do in your makeprg setting
> SA> is the following:
>
> SA> if has('win32')
> SA> 	set &makeprg = 'latex -interaction=nonstopmode $*'
> SA> endif
>
> SA> this is how miktex likes it.
>
> Well, I discovered that teTeX likes this too, so I changed makeprg to this
> version.
>
This might be of quite a bit of interest to the vim-latex-devel people.
Benji was concerned that the -interaction=nonstopmode (I thought it was
--interaction but it looks like -interaction works too for miktex) will
break tex compilers and that the \\nonstopmode is a better alternative.
If it is true that most if not all latex compilers can handle
-interaction style syntax, it will take care of the old backslash
escaping problem once and for all..

> SA> yet another thingie which broke when i used it with bash/cygwin is that
> SA> external programs get executed as following:
>
> SA>   !bash -c "latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}"
>
> why not
>
> !bash -c 'latex \\nonstopmode \\input\{thesis.tex\}'
>

Yes... I guess I could have changed the value of shellquote. Vim guesses
'shellquote' to be " when I do :set shell=bash in my .vimrc...

Srinath

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003, Mikolaj Machowski wrote:

> I think it is easier to write some macros in vim/perl/python translating
> vim-help format into xml/whatever than to translate it from xml and get
> instantly nice formatting which is very important to readability of
> vim-help files.
>
Actually, I think converting xml to vim help format will be much easier
than the other way around... because the syntax of xml is so rigid and
there are xml parsers available in python/perl etc.

I looked at the xml.dom.minidom module of python briefly and I beleive
that a converter shouldn't be too hard to do... But ofcourse, there
might be even easier methods...

Besides, xml is so much easier to write because it is freeform. I do not
have to bother with paragraph indentation etc...

Srinath

[Vim-latex-devel] Re: latex2word

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

Hello, 

* On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 08:45:21PM +0100, Mikolaj Machowski <mi...@wp...> wrote:
> > Thanks for your powerfull vim-Latex ..
> > I would be gratefull if u could show me how to convert dvi output
> > (within vim-latex console) to ms-word
> 
> I don't know any tool to make conversion dvi->ms-word.  Maybe you
> could use latex2html and then import its output into Word.

There is quite an interresting tool able to convert word into LaTeX
(word2tex). I think the writer of the tool also provide another doing
the convertion in the other direction.

Otherwise, I guess it is also possible to convert the dvi/tex into pdf
and then use tools like acrobat writer to produce word-documents. It is
just another licence to buy.


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

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

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

* On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 07:05:13PM +0100, Mikolaj Machowski <mi...@wp...> wrote:
> Maybe other non-english users could say something about their usage of
> LaTeX? Luc, Fabio?

The French packages I'm aware of are: `french', `frenchle', `francais'
(used to exist), and `babel'. There might exist another package, but now
I use `babel' -- almost the same as frenchle. 'french' is the most
advanced, but not free of charges.

So far, I have never written any text having significant passages in
more than one language -- except code.

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

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

[Mikolaj M. <mi...@wp...>]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 12:44:46PM -0800, Srinath Avadhanula wrote:
> Okay... I'll write the documentation for now in vim-help format itself
> and set myself a couple of rigid rules... Hopefully that will make
> conversion easy...

I think it is easier to write some macros in vim/perl/python translating
vim-help format into xml/whatever than to translate it from xml and get
instantly nice formatting which is very important to readability of
vim-help files.

Mikolaj

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

Hey Benji,

Thanks for taking this up...

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003, Benji Fisher wrote:

>       I am willing to look into this.  It may take me a couple of weeks
> before I can get anywhere, though.  You may have noticed that I posted
> to the vim-dev list, in order to get a wider range of experience.  So
> far, the answers are not so encouraging as I had hoped.
>
You might also want to take a look at this:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/dom-example.html

All the answers which people seem to be giving you on vim-dev seem to
have the flavor of using some xslt kind of approach. That will require
you to learn yet another thing. From what I can see in the minidom
example, if you take a python programming approach (and I know you use
and like python), at least for our xml2vim thing, you might end up
getting something faster. Just a suggestion... Ofcourse I have about 2
hours of knowledge about xml so far, so maybe (most probably) there is
something easier... What about asking this on an xml newsgroup/mailing
list?

>       In the mean time, I suggest writing documentation in whatever
> format seems easiest.  If you structure things as consistently as
> possible, it should not be hard (using the best text editor in the
> world) to convert to xml.

Okay... I'll write the documentation for now in vim-help format itself
and set myself a couple of rigid rules... Hopefully that will make
conversion easy...

Srinath

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

Srinath Avadhanula wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Luc Hermitte wrote:
> 
> 
>>xml is not complicated at all.  There exists several interresting
>>tools that manipulate xml files under windows platform.  For instance,
>>XT can parse a xml data file and apply an xslt file on it to convert
>>the data into any desired format: xsl:fo (used to produced pdf), html,
>>latex, text, etc ; or even vim help file.  It you are interrested, I
>>can search through my bookmarks the links I got.
>>
> 
> 
> I am very interested... I didn't know much about xslt for instance. I
> was searching around on google today for xml and all I managed to get so
> far is a very very good introduction and no solid examples...
> 
> I did in fact search for xslt too and came across this:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt
> 
> but I was just overwhelmed by the documentation... The problem I am
> facing is that I am completeley totally new to this, so I don't even
> know whats a good place to spend time at. For instance, should I spend
> time learning the xml.minidom package of python and write a custom
> xml->vimhelp converter (I don't have time for this right now...), or
> should I learn xslt and write a xslt stylesheet (am I using the right
> terminology?)
> 
> Also I would like to know for instance how much time I would have to
> spend writing a style sheet for xml-vimhelp. If it is a big enough
> project, it might be a good idea to float a project for it. I know quite
> a few people would benefit from such a tool...
> 
> Another question is how powerful something like xt is. Will it be able
> to generate vim help files which look somewhat like the present
> latex-suite.txt? Generating a vim help file is going to be tougher than
> generating an html file because in html we do not bother with paragraph
> width, indented paragraphs etc.
> 
> As a concrete example, will something like:

      I am willing to look into this.  It may take me a couple of weeks 
before I can get anywhere, though.  You may have noticed that I posted 
to the vim-dev list, in order to get a wider range of experience.  So 
far, the answers are not so encouraging as I had hoped.

      We can get vim2html and latex2html, but so far there seems to be 
no mechanism to generate both latex and vim from the same sources.  From 
what I have "heard," it seems that xml/xslt/DocBook is the way to go.  I 
think the xml2vim piece is the only one that needs to be made, and it 
will help us, the latex documentation project, and others.  So I 
volunteer to do it, with my usual caveat:  unless someone else beats me 
to it.

      In the mean time, I suggest writing documentation in whatever 
format seems easiest.  If you structure things as consistently as 
possible, it should not be hard (using the best text editor in the 
world) to convert to xml.

					--Benji

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] latex2word

[Mikolaj M. <mi...@wp...>]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 12:29:29AM -0800, Babiker Osman wrote:
> Dear  sir
> Thanks for your powerfull vim-Latex ..
> I would be gratefull if u could show me how to convert
> dvi output (within vim-latex console) to ms-word

I don't know any tool to make conversion dvi->ms-word.
Maybe you could use latex2html and then import its output
into Word.

Mikolaj

[Vim-latex-devel] (no subject)

[Babiker O. <bab...@ya...>]

Dear  sir

Thanks for your powerfull vim-Latex ..
I would be gratefull if u could show me how to convert
dvi output (within vim-latex console) to ms-word
 document..

yours
Dr.  Babiker Osman


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

[Vim-latex-devel] Dear sir

[Babiker O. <bab...@ya...>]

 
 

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

[Vim-latex-devel] Dear sir

[Babiker O. <bab...@ya...>]

 
 

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Luc Hermitte wrote:

> xml is not complicated at all.  There exists several interresting
> tools that manipulate xml files under windows platform.  For instance,
> XT can parse a xml data file and apply an xslt file on it to convert
> the data into any desired format: xsl:fo (used to produced pdf), html,
> latex, text, etc ; or even vim help file.  It you are interrested, I
> can search through my bookmarks the links I got.
>

I am very interested... I didn't know much about xslt for instance. I
was searching around on google today for xml and all I managed to get so
far is a very very good introduction and no solid examples...

I did in fact search for xslt too and came across this:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt

but I was just overwhelmed by the documentation... The problem I am
facing is that I am completeley totally new to this, so I don't even
know whats a good place to spend time at. For instance, should I spend
time learning the xml.minidom package of python and write a custom
xml->vimhelp converter (I don't have time for this right now...), or
should I learn xslt and write a xslt stylesheet (am I using the right
terminology?)

Also I would like to know for instance how much time I would have to
spend writing a style sheet for xml-vimhelp. If it is a big enough
project, it might be a good idea to float a project for it. I know quite
a few people would benefit from such a tool...

Another question is how powerful something like xt is. Will it be able
to generate vim help files which look somewhat like the present
latex-suite.txt? Generating a vim help file is going to be tougher than
generating an html file because in html we do not bother with paragraph
width, indented paragraphs etc.

As a concrete example, will something like:

-----------------------------%<-----------------------------
<option>
<name>IMAP_PlaceHolderStart</name>
<name>IMAP_PlaceHolderEnd</name>
<desc>
These settings affect the display of the starting and ending
placeholder characters
</desc>
</option>
-----------------------------%<-----------------------------

get converted into

--------------------------------%<--------------------------------
                                           *IMAP_PlaceHolderStart*
                                             *IMAP_PlaceHolderEnd*
IMAP_PlaceHolderStart
IMAP_PlaceHolderEnd       These settings affect the display of the
                          starting and ending placeholder settings
--------------------------------%<--------------------------------

Note how the actual text is left indented with leading spaces...
What about generating a table of contentes automatically?

> I use another way to produce html help file from vim help file. It is
> based on awk scripts shipped with vim. It is not so bad.
>
That sounds interesting too... Does that manage hyperlinking and color?
Another problem with the automated vim-html tools I've found so far is
the indiscriminate cross-linking they do. For example, they link the has
in a sentence "This package has the following features" to the
has() function...

Thanks,

Srinath

[Vim-latex-devel] Re: Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

hello,

* On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 09:10:56PM -0800, Srinath Avadhanula <sr...@fa...> wrote:
> 1. Maintain documentation in a single format. This could be one of
>    vim-help, html, latex, xml or whatever. I have actually never done
>    xml before, but have heard lots about it... I don't know if there
>    are any nice xml tools for windows platforms...

xml is not complicated at all.
There exists several interresting tools that manipulate xml files under
windows platform.
For instance, XT can parse a xml data file and apply an xslt file on it to
convert the data into any desired format: xsl:fo (used to produced
pdf), html, latex, text, etc ; or even vim help file.
It you are interrested, I can search through my bookmarks the links I
got.

> 2. From this one file, I would like to create the vim-help file and the
>    html documentation for the web-page.
> The only way I know of to maintain a single source of documentation is:
> 
> Always edit the vim help file. Use the 2html.vim script to convert to
> html and use that in the web-page. 

I use another way to produce html help file from vim help file. It is
based on awk scripts shipped with vim. It is not so bad.

> Unfortunately I am working on too many things right now to be also
> working on a latex2vim or similar scipt...

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

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

[Mikolaj M. <mi...@wp...>]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 09:22:33AM -0500, Benji Fisher wrote:
>      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.

It looks like german package is part of babel system which is
responsible for i18n of LaTeX. Babelization makes only few (but
important) things: hyphenation, local letters, renew sectioning and
similar commands maybe typographic rules.

You can for example do that:
------------------
\documentclass[a4paper]{book}
\usepackage[german,polish]{babel}
\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{polish}
\chapter{Halo to ja}        <- Here will be Rozdział (Chapter)

Hello world. Here you can use Polish letters.
\selectlanguage{german} 
\chapter{Halo}              <- Here will be Kapitel

Hello another world. Here will be umlauts.
\end{document}
------------------

But preamble can be defined in other manner:
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{polish}
\usepackage{german}

Or according to docs even
\documentclass[a4paper,german,polish]{book}
\usepackage{babel}

But latter two styles don't work flawlessy for me. Only first gives no
errors. Second gives errors but work as expected and third works no at
all.

I am uploading "regular" babel package file - with latex commands and
options without specialized functions.

About 'polski'. 'polski' is not a part of 'babel' system. This is
completely separate, standalone package wich makes much more than option
polish in 'babel' package. There is no option polski in 'babel', only
polish. 

>      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.

Here is problem. For some languages, are separate files which works
alone (german, ngerman, french). I am not mentioning 'polski' here
because its name is different from babel option.

IMO here stuff should be duplicated. Create separate file german, which
is sourced after \usepackage{german} is detected (normal behaviour), and
section in babel file package (if..elseif..endif) which will be
triggered after detecting an option for babel package. Options for ther
rest of languages would be in 'babel' file. But what about 2nd or 3rd
types of declarations? I think we should drop it.  Too much
work for something which is kinda broken (at least for me...).

Maybe other non-english users could say something about their usage of
LaTeX? Luc, Fabio?

Mikolaj

[Vim-latex-devel] Whats the best way to write vim documentation?

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

Hello,

I have recently decided to revamp the documentation of latex-suite to
make it more comprehensive and easily navigable. I would ideally like to
do the following:

1. Maintain documentation in a single format. This could be one of
   vim-help, html, latex, xml or whatever. I have actually never done
   xml before, but have heard lots about it... I don't know if there are
   any nice xml tools for windows platforms...

2. From this one file, I would like to create the vim-help file and the
   html documentation for the web-page.

The only way I know of to maintain a single source of documentation is:

Always edit the vim help file. Use the 2html.vim script to convert to
html and use that in the web-page. I don't like this approach because
the html page generated by this method..., well.. quite frankly sucks.
It is also a hassle to maintain pages which look like:

|ls_1| Basic editing
    |ls_1_1| Environments
    |ls_1_1| Fonts
|ls_2| Compiling from vim
.
.
.

I would prefer to maintain something like:

\section{Basic Editing}
\label{sec:basicediting}
  \subsection{Environments}
.
.
.

I really like the html generated by latex2html but unfortunately I do
not know of anything like latex2vim. Infact that would be ideal...
Ofcourse even if I do get a latex2vim I wouldn't know how to make it
generate links in the html file...

Is there any other better way?

Basically, I am asking the exact same thing Peter Karp asks in this
post:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=latex+%2Bto+vim+help&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=79jkluc1tacttnf4lm2osr28fedqvt5o4b%404ax.com&rnum=1

Unfortunately I am working on too many things right now to be also
working on a latex2vim or similar scipt...


Srinath

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

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

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Benji Fisher wrote:

>       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.
>
I am sorry I didn't start a branch... This thing just snowballed from
what was supposed to be not too big a change...

>       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.
>
Yup... That looks good...

>       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.
>
I just had too many things on my mind... Please go ahead and change
things as needed. Note however that there does need to exist a babel
package because packages/polski is never going to be used if
\usepackage{polski} is not detected. Did you have something else in
mind?

Maybe instead of just defining all these dummy package files, just make
a function Tex_SetLanguageSettings() and an au which calls this on the
LatexSuitePackagesScanned event? Maybe as in vim, put this in a
packages/allpackage.vim file which gets sourced once when latex-suite
starts?

>       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?
>
I was just following the cvscommand model... The way you suggests looks
better because User is highlighted too...

>       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.
>
Yes... The present packages/babel is just a prototype for the general
event handling mechanism... I haven't actually invested time in the
actual options setting part of it... I would be glad if someone with
knowledge of the babel package could take over...

>       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.
>
Yes. g:Tex_package_detected is guarenteeed to be of the form
'pack1,pack2' g:Tex_{pack}_options is however just yanked from between
the [ ]'s of the \usepackage[options]{pack}. Since latex is quite a bit
more forgiving about commas, we cannot guarantee a fixed sytnax here.

Srinath