Comments on: Working with dtx files

By: Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:57:54 +0000

Hello Vafa,

Perhaps a list of points to bear in mind, sent to the LaTeX-L list, might be handy.

Joseph

By: Vafa Khalighi

Vafa Khalighi — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:08:31 +0000

Yes, I meant LTX3. Thanks for the news.

By: Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:58:55 +0000

Hello Vafa,

If you mean “beyond LaTeX2e”, then I’d be confident of a define “yes” to bidi support in LaTeX. However, the LaTeX2e kernel is not going to change, other than fixing bugs. So at that level you’ll be disappointed.

Joseph

By: Vafa Khalighi

Vafa Khalighi — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:57:32 +0000

It also would be a nice idea if LTX people consider supporting bidi typesetting in LaTeX kernel. With bidi typesetting, a lot of LTX codes, needs modifications. ConTeXt does this in MKIV and it would be wonderful if this also happens in LTX, otherwise some eventually might migrate to ConTeXt from LTX.

By: Vafa Khalighi

Vafa Khalighi — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:49:49 +0000

The thing that I said about gedit and TeXworks, was in no way saying that TeXworks is weak or putting it down. What I meant was that in my case, where I have to do heaps of bidirectional testing for the packages that I maintain such as ledmac, xepersian and bidi, gedit makes my job very easy comparing to TeXworks and there are things in gedit that TeXWorks lacks and of course there are things in TeXWorks that gedit lacks, but I find personally gedit more useful. TeXWorks as Jonathan Kew mentioned is designed for new comers to TeX and it may or may not contain all the tools that an advanced TeXhacker needs in a editor, but TeXworks is still in its early stages of development and I hope in future, it becomes a choice of editor for most people, further, I hope, it will support perfect bidirectional typesetting as gedit almost does now.

By: Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:26:35 +0000

Hello Vafa,

AS I’ve said elsewhere, there is no one editor that will suit everyone. I’m happy with TeXworks, having used WinEdt previously. That doesn’t mean I won’t also be happy with something else!

On the formatting examples ideas, I’ve tended to go for something quite “light”. I’ll certainly take a look at the stuff you do in bidi.

Joseph

By: Vafa Khalighi

Vafa Khalighi — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:21:04 +0000

Hi Will,
Unfortunately there is no documentation, but I am going to write one for next version of bidi. bidi at the moment is massive and the documentation including implementation would be something like 500 pages so getting it done, takes some time. and I am hoping to get it done by the end of January.

By: Will Robertson

Will Robertson — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:09:41 +0000

HI Vafa,

That looks really interesting!
Is there any documentation? I couldn’t even see any for the bidi package itself?

Will

By: Vafa Khalighi

Vafa Khalighi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:01:05 +0000

I use gedit for writing dtx source files and it is perfect and I do not think TeXWorks or any other text editor can ever compete with that. Its windows and Mac versions are also available.

Could I suggest you that for writting example codes and documentation, you can try my bidicode package. It .sty file that comes with bidi package (it has of course nothing to do with bidirectional typesetting) and it is very useful. It combines several packages, such as listings, showexpl and fvrb-ex and provides a very strong set of commands for writing codes and example codes.

If you want to typeset an example, you can try LTXexample environment, it both shows the TeX code and the output that user gets automatically, for example

\begin{LTXexample}
\documentclass{article}
\title{Test}
\author{A. U. Thor}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}
\end{LTXexample}

It also has optional orguments, that you can change the background colour, place of the frames (source and output) in adiition to many other things. In addition, it highlights your TeX code very well.

And also some useful definitions are provided for explaining general syntax, for example, if you want to say

\usepackage[options]{package-name}

You can say
\begin{BDef}
\Lcs{usepackage}\OptArgs\Largb{package-name}
\end{BDef}

It put the code in a box, in addition it puts [options] in a gray box and uses appropriate fonts for all sections.

I extremely find the code typeset by bidicode package attractive.

By: The TDS and TDS zip files at Some TeX Developments

The TDS and TDS zip files at Some TeX Developments — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:06:29 +0000

[...] my post about working with dtx files, I made the somewhat throw-away statement The idea of a TDS-ready zip is also popular [...]