Faster numeric subscripts

[tecosaur]

Hello, me again :)

When trying to quickly write out some maths whenever I type a (latin/greek) letter followed by a numeral, 95% of the time I'm doing a subscript (e.g. x and 0 to make x_0). Something I have tried (in another editor) and found very convenient is having a numeral immediately following a letter/symbol automatically form a subscript, (i.e. x0 → x_0, and x11 → x_{11}).

If it would be possible to have this functionality in cdlatex that would be marvellous!

Thanks 😃

[cdominik]

Hi tecosaur,

I am not planning to implement that, it is too specific.

• Carsten

[Sinthoras7]

Hey Carsten,

to be honest, I don't think this is as niche as you think. I encountered this wish multiple times on the internet. (Probably one thing, that popularized this idea was this blogpost https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/). I myself switched from Vim to Emacs, and I am missing this feature indeed.

Because of this, I suggest that you reconsider this. Of course, you don't have to implement it, and I don't want to demand anything, as I am really grateful for your work and active communication!

[cdominik]

Hey,
I am not saying necessarily that it is rare. It really requires a different mechanism, I think. It requires adding a keybinding to all the digits, and some complicated correction mechanism when your type several digits.

More feasible would be to have a command that looks at what you have just typed make make the change.

For example x 1 1 C-c i

Is this really much better than

x _ 11 TAB

? I can see it would be faster if you just had to type

x 1

to get x_1. but wiht several digits that gets messy quickly.

I am not saying that what tecosuar proposes is not a good idea - I just think it might be better to have this as a separate minor mode.

[Sinthoras7]

Yeah, I see the point. I don't think the implementation - especially for just a single digit, which is enough 95% of the time - would be that hard, compared to other things in cdlatex (like the cdlatex-math-modify-method, or the overloaded tab key), but this automatic expanding is a different style and might really be more fitting in another minor mode.

[cdominik]

Thanks for your message. OK, so I am not going to take an action inside cdlatex. Maybe I could try to implement it separately, it is an interesting challenge, but I would have to find a bit of time. Cheers Carsten

…

On Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 9:03 PM Sinthoras ***@***.***> wrote: Yeah, I see the point. I don't think the implementation - especially for just a single digit, which is enough 95% of the time - would be that hard, compared to other things in cdlatex (like the cdlatex-math-modify-method, or the overloaded tab key), but this automatic expanding is a different style and might really be more fitting in another minor mode. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#14 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAIABJ7FTZ4WIIVGWGJ6Q3V5DRGRANCNFSM4LBMLVLQ> . You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[cdominik]

Hi, I have reopened this issue. I tried to implement this feature and I do think I have a testable version. You need to switch to the "electricindex" branch. There you will find a file electricindex.el that implements a minor mode electricindex mode.

It does the following

x 1 turns into x_1
x 1 2 3 turns into x_{123}

etc. This mode uses texmathp to activate this functionality only in LaTeX math mode.

I am considering to distribute this minor mode with cdlatex, but as a separate file, electric index.el. I would be interested in comments and opinions.

Thanks. Carsten

[Sinthoras7]

Hi, that seems great. Is there a reason, for having those whitespaces in between? I mean, it is one keystroke more than letting x1 turn into x_1 and x123 into x_{123}.

[tecosaur]

FYI this functionality (and more) currently exists in https://github.com/tecosaur/LaTeX-auto-activating-snippets.

[Sinthoras7]

By the way: I discovered this other package 1 which also contains this subscript functionality. Actually this is a whole snippet-engine and I abuse it just for the subscripts (through setting the variables, containing the snippet-lists to nil) and it works fine.

[cdominik]

Hi, does this mean that the implementation I made is no longer required? Carsten

…

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 3:00 PM Sinthoras ***@***.***> wrote: By the way: I discovered this other package 1 <https://github.com/tecosaur/LaTeX-auto-activating-snippets> which also contains this subscript functionality. Actually this is a whole snippet-engine and I abuse it just for the subscripts (through setting the variables, containing the snippet-lists to nil) and it works fine. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#14 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAIABO3VTTB76R2YX4GKXTV6RVPPANCNFSM4LBMLVLQ> . You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[tecosaur]

I think so?

[Sinthoras7]

Hey,
I think it is not useless, since the other implementation is bound to a whole snippet engine, (and has still some small bugs) while this one is clean and short, but it's probably not worth the effort.

[cdominik]

Well, the effort is done, I think. The question is: Do I leave move it into the main branch of the cdlatex github repository. Carsten

…

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 7:44 PM Sinthoras ***@***.***> wrote: Hey, I think it is not useless, since the other implementation is bound to a whole snippet engine, (and has still some small bugs) while this one is clean and short, but it's probably not worth the effort. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#14 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAIABMO2FNYD3BPQMGPJLTV6SWXBANCNFSM4LBMLVLQ> . You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state.Message ID: ***@***.***>