Jim Schummer's WinEdt 5.4 Stuff

Disclaimer:I hereby declare that I am not liable for anything. If this software causes your computer to blow up, too bad. That's what backups are for. Upon anyone who does not take this disclaimer seriously, I shall bestow the Eternal Curse of the Soft Wrap.

(But seriously, you should be ok.) If you have questions, you can probably find help on the WinEdt mailing list. Do post there if you have a question.

Buttons

I use Firefox, and sometimes play with the Python programming language. Since WinEdt does not come with icons/buttons for these programs, I made some. (NB: WinEdt version 5.5 now includes these buttons!) If you want to install them to WinEdt 5.4, do the following.

1. Read the file %B\Doc\ToolBar.txt (especially near the end). This tells you how to edit .btn and .img files in order to add buttons. It's easy, but if this sounds like too much work, stop here.
2. Now that you fully understand how to add buttons, download the zip file containing the buttons. (This zip file contains 16X16, 21X20 (2 copies), and 42X40 bitmaps of Firefox and Python icons. There are eight files, but only two file names! This follows the naming convention used in WinEdt's directory structure.
3. Unzip the files. (Suggestion: unzip the Large buttons to %b\Bitmaps\Buttons-Large, unzip the small ones to %b\Bitmaps\Buttons-Small, etc. Note these relative path names are already specified in the zip file.)
4. Modify the .img and .btn files as you read about in step 1, adding the appropriate lines pointing to your new files. (Here is an example of my Winedt.btn file for reference.)
5. Restart WinEdt, and the new buttons will be available in the Tool Bar Setup.

GUI for psutils

Note: WinEdt 5.5 comes with a built-in, extended GUI generator. Only use this page for WinEdt 5.4.

Written by Angus Duggan, psutils is a collection of utilities for manipulating PostScript files. It is distributed with TeX distributions such as MikTeX, but is also available independently. These handy utilities run from the command line, and use many hard-to-remember arguments. Therefore, I wrote a quick and dirty GUI to interface with some of these utilities and some of their parameters.

This interface requires the installation of the MUI package available from winedt.org.

Once installed, my GUI (currently) allows you a simple way to perform the following PSutilities on your PostScript file.

• psnup: put multiple "pages" on each sheet of paper.
• psselect: extract selected pages from a PS file into a new PS file.
• "psbooklet": create a file which can be used to print booklets (uses psbook and psnup).
• "a4 to letter": uses psresize to quickly convert an a4 PostScript file to letter size.
• "letter to a4": uses psresize to quickly convert a letter size PostScript file to a4.

To install, perform the following steps.

1. Be sure you have psutils installed, and that the executables are in your PATH. (You can check this by typing "psnup -?" (without the quotes) at a command prompt. If you get an error, give up now!)
2. Install MUI from Winedt.org. MUI does not come standard with WinEdt, so you must get it first.
3. Download the zip file containing the macros, and unzip it. (Keep all the files in the same directory.) The zip file contains six macros to interact with psutils, plus an installation macro and menu information.
4. Install: If you want to take the easy way (and if you trust me), simply open the installation macro PSU-install.edt in WinEdt, and execute it (by pressing shift-ctrl-F9). The install macro will only: (i) copy the macros to %b\Macros\psutils\, and (ii) creates a new menu item (under the Accessories menu). You can then delete the files you unzipped yourself.
   Alternately, you can put the macros in whatever directory you prefer, and then create your own menu items. (The files must remain together in the same directory to work, though!) You can also create a menu item for any of the five individual macros. E.g., if you only use psnup, create a shortcut that invokes psnup-gui.edt directly; this bypasses the psutils menu.
5. Use: Open a *.tex file, and create a *.ps file (e.g. by using dvips). Then run the psutils-menu.edt macro. (If you used the installation macro, look in the Accessories menu; otherwise create your own menu item.) The rest should be self-explanatory.

Tweaks

• My JS-Erase-Working-Files.edt file makes two changes to the default 'Erase Working Files.edt' file: (1) only delete files that share the %N filename (except *.tmp), and (2) the Summary dialog box only displays files if they exist. These are two changes that make me less likely to accidentally delete something I didn't want to.
• By adding only one more line to JS-HTML-Preview.edt, the HTML Preview button can launch my browser even when I am not editing an html type of file. (You will have to edit the last line, as applicable for your system, and uncheck the Requires Document button for HTML Preview, in the Menu-setup.)
• Invoking gnuplot from WinEdt: use -persist. Gnuplot is a plotting program. If you want to edit your gnuplot files in WinEdt and then view them as easily as a LaTeX file, then go into Menu Setup and create the following new Macro:
  Run('c:\PATH\gnuplot\bin\wgnuplot.exe %n%t -persist','%p');
  (using the appropriate PATH). I would check the "Save input file to disk" option when creating this menu item. It took me forever to figure out the -persist option. Without it, gnuplot will compile your file, display the graph, but then instantly close. If this tip solved your problem, let me know!