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Vim-latex tools

vim-latex.sourceforge.net

9 pointsfs1114 comments

What users in #vim (freenode) think about this plugin:

    An slightly-maintained, buggy, over-complicated plugin intended to make
    it easier to author (La)Tex files. Often, this is better served by using a
    standalone snippets plugin (like snipMate) to define the snippets you
    actually find useful as well as using the command ':compiler tex' to allow
    using Vim's quickfix feature when compiling TeX to an output format.

It's a bit unfair if you take into account for how long the vim-latex suite is around. Back then in the old days, plugins had dull names, snippets were called templates, and the people on #vim probably just learned to spell their names.

I find LaTeX-Suite bloated. Since I already use snipMate and SuperTab which provides minimal but useful TeX support, I only had to install TeX-PDF (with Rubber) to ease the latex/bibtex compile cycles.

On a slightly different note -- and if your LaTeX needs aren't too complex -- I'm working on a clone of Emacs' Org-mode that runs in Vim. Org-mode has a kick-ass export to LaTeX/PDF that adds a good portion of the markup based on your outline structure and some other simplified markup ( http://orgmode.org/manual/Structural-markup-elements.html#St... ), so a lot of the messy LaTeX markup can be left out of your main document.

I originally started work on my Org-mode clone in Vim because:

(1) I was a Vim user and couldn't quite make the switch to use Emacs' Org-mode, (2) I loved Org-mode's export to LaTeX/PDF, and (3) when I switched back to Vim from Org-mode I gave LaTeX-suite a try, but it felt a little too "low-level" for me.

So my thought was to write a simple outliner in Vim that was basically file-compatible with Org-mode (which was not too difficult), then call out to an Emacs server when I wanted to print to LaTeX/PDF. (Same principle works to export to nicely formatted HTML document or any other export Org-mode has.) This works very smoothly; assuming I have my Emacs server running initiating the export from Vim is just as fast and easy as if I were working directly Emacs.

Now I'm moving on to the more difficult task of duplicating other functionality in Org-mode, but if you just want a great way to author LaTeX docs in Vim my clone is already a decent solution for many uses. You can alter the LaTeX preamble defaults and enter LaTeX commands directly in the Vim Org-mode file, but I'm not sure how usable it is for more complex documents. Could do a little checking into Org-mode newsgroups to find out. . .

Anyway, for info on Org-mode's LaTeX publishing functionality see here: http://orgmode.org/manual/LaTeX-and-PDF-export.html#LaTeX-an...

For a blurb about my Org-mode clone you can check here: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3342

Best way to get it is from github: https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer

Caveat: The project is in its early state, there isn't much documentation, and there are of course bugs and incomplete features. But for a basic export to LaTeX PDF or HTML all you need to do is (1) start up an Emacs instance to work as your server, (2) write or load an Org-mode outline into Vim that has the VimOrganizer ftplugin, and (3) issue command :OrgToPDF or :OrgToHTML.

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