LaTeXTools plugin: new features

I have recently added two simple but hopefully useful features to the LaTeXTools plugin. I hope they will make your TeX life more comfortable.

As usual, you will get the updated plugin automatically if you installed LaTeXTools using Package Control, which, as I noted earlier, I strongly encourage you to do.

Switching to the PDF viewer after compiling

By default, LaTeXTools keeps the focus on the Sublime Text 2 (ST2) window after compiling a TeX source file to PDF. This is convenient in two scenarios. First, if you have a large screen (or two monitors), you can keep ST2 and your PDF viewer side by side, and just glance at the output to see that all is OK. It would be quite annoying if the viewer window was brought to the foreground in this case: in order to continue editing, you would have to manually switch back to ST2 (using Alt-Tab or Cmd-Tab, depending on your platform). The other scenario is when you are making many small changes to the file sequentially; you compile to make sure that there are no errors or warnings, but do not need to check the PDF output every time. I also have friends and coauthors who simply don’t need to look at the PDF output all that often–they can read LaTeX easily, and would much rather not be distracted by the viewer window popping up.

That said, it is sometimes convenient to switch to the PDF output, especially if you are using a small screen and running both ST2 and your viewer in full-screen mode. In such cases, it would be nice if LaTeXTools could automatically bring up the viewer after compiling. Yet, the previous paragraph gives a few reasons why this shouldn’t be hard-wired.

Enter the Toggle Focus command (bound to Shift+Win+F on Windows and Ctrl+Cmd+F on OSX). It does what you think: every time you invoke it, it changes what the Build command does after compilation. Again, by default, the Build command refreshes the PDF viewer but makes sure that ST2 keeps the focus; so, if you invoke the Toggle Focus command, the next time around Build will actually tell the PDF viewer to grab the focus, i.e. pop us as the frontmost window. Invoke Toggle Focus again, and you get the default behavior back. Every time you switch, a short notification appears in the Status Bar (at the bottom of the ST2 window), so you know what you just did.

Note that this setting is preserved with your session; if you quit ST2 without first closing the tab you are working on, ST2 will remember the status of the focus toggle.

Wrapping existing text in LaTeX commands or environments

The current facilities for entering LaTeX commands or environments (Alt-Shift-[ and Alt-Shift-] on Windows, Cmd-Shift-[ and Cmd-Shift-] on OSX) are useful when you want to first specify the type of environment or command you want, and then enter text in it. However, sometimes you want to wrap some existing text in a command or environment. The most common use case is to emphasize text, or make it bold. I don’t use this feature that often myself, but a colleague mentioned it as one of the main reason why he was sticking with TextMate for the time being.

I have now added a nice collection of wrap commands. They are all bound to Alt-Shift-W on Windows and Option-Shift-W on OSX, followed by an additional key (i.e. you use a “key chord” to invoke them). You must select some text prior to invoking these commands.

Alt+Shift+W followed by n wraps the selected text in an environment, which by default is called “env”: that is, if “blah” is the text currently selected, it gets replaced by

\begin{env}
blah
\end{env}

and the env is highlighted. Enter your desired environment (e.g. “theorem”). When you are done, hit Tab to jump to the end of the environment.

Alt+Shift+W followed by c instead enters a command: “blah” becomes \cmd{blah}, with cmd selected so you can change it to whatever you like.

Finally, a few common commands have dedicated key bindings: Alt+Shift+W followed by e, b and u respectively give you \emph{...}, \textbf{...} and \underline{...}.

Happy TeXing!

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