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Questions re Tex-Edit Plus

From Laurence

Charles,

I really want to use Tex-Edit Plus but 2 things stop me, and I haven't been able to get a satisfactory answer from Tex himself:

1. How to move the cursor from paragraph to paragraph

2. How to use services in Leopard to send text to Tex-Edit

Thanks for any help you can give me,

Laurence

Hi Laurence;

I haven't heard from Tex Edit PLus developer Tom Bender for some time, and the program has not been updated for 10 months, which I hope indicates that Tom is simply busy with other things.

Regarding your questions, I'm guessing the first one pertains to some sort of keyboard shortcut for jumping the cursor from paragraph to paragraph. If shch a shortcut exists for TE+, I'm not aware of it. As you've probably checked in the TE+ Help file, the fiollowing shortcuts aer supported:

• Option-left/right arrow moves the cursor one word at a time.

• Command-left/right arrow moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the line.

• Option-up/down arrow moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the page.

However, there appears to be nothing interediate between beginning/end of line and beginning/end of page.

It might be possible to record an AppleScript or use Automator to create a scripted shortcut with a keystroke toggle configured.

I just use the mouse.

Second question, Tex Edit Plus for OS X is a Carbon port from the Mac OS Classic application that dates back to the mid-'90s, and not written in OS X Cocoa, which is required for default Services support. Tom was able to tweak TE+ to support exports to Services-savvy applications (as well as supporting the built-in OS X spell checker), but receiving data via Services was not possible evidentally. I think he explained the reason to me some years ago now, but a clear recollection eludes me.

Hope this helps a bit, and that you'll try the program anyway to see if it grows on you. I've been doing a high-nineties percentage of my word crunching in TE+ for nearly a decade, and I've never found a tool for this purpose that Ilike better.

Charles

Thanks and Bento Feature Suggestion

From Frank Falcone:

Hi Charles,

First, I wanted to thank you for your "multiple clipboard" alternatives in your last mail. My apologies for not thanking you sooner.

About Bento. It's nice, but there is one thing that is totally missing to make this a "killer" app: "One-click" web publishing. If you could display your DB as an instant web file, this app would be in a class by itself. (Well, it kinda already is).

Do I have to think of EVERYTHING for these guys? lol.

Your thoughts?

Frank

Hi Frank;

My pleasure.

One-click Web publishing sounds liek a feature that would enhance the program's usefulness and desirability. Something for the Bento developers to consider in a subsequent version. THey have plenty of Web-savvy engineering to draw on from FileMaker Pro, so I expect it would be doable.

Charles

Photoshop Elements 6.0 iPhoto Integration

From Greg

Photoshop Elements 4 DID NOT work well with iPhoto & I see no reason why PE 6 would be any better. I consistently had problems seeing photos in iPhoto after they were edited with PE 4. Their support was never able to fix it for me.

Also,PE has always been bloated and not user-friendly.

Hi Greg;

Well, it's true that Adobe didn't invest a lot of effort into iPhoto integration, other than linking to it as an external editor. They would recommend using their own bundled image browser and organizer The Bridge, which is a big bonus for users of the Mac version of PSE because it's basically the same Bridge application that comes with Photoshops CS with a few features disabled. Windows PSE 6 users get the clunky Organizer instead.

Not sure why you would have trouble viewing photos in iPhoto after editing in PSE though. Did this happen with all image formats?

No argument about the user-friendly part. As I said in the review, "I don't love the un-Mac like and in many ways clunky user interface or the sometimes gratuitous-seeming complexity and counter-intuitiveness."

As for bloat, it's a matter of perspective. Compared to Photoshop CS or the GIMP, PSE is svelte.

However, if you want a powerful, modern image editor that's more nimble and lightweight than PSE, check out Pixelmator (there's a free demo). You may find its iPhoto integration more to your liking as well.

Direct Download Link:

http://www.pixelmator.com/download/

Charles

CM