TeXMan

TeXMan is a LaTeX template manager. Its goal is to a customizable template manager to quickly create documents.

Table of contents

Configuration

Creating a profile

Installation

Requirements

Arch Linux

Other Unix Systems

Quick start

Features

TODO

Credits

Configuration

The configuration file is placed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/texman/texman.toml. Here is a sample configuration file.

template_dir = "$HOME/Documents/Templates"

There will be a default in /etc/texman.conf soon.

Creating a profile

Profiles are the way you can reuse templates that are very frequent. For example, I have a profile set for different classes with different but static teammates. I is convienient to simply call TeXMan and have my homework ready to go.

Profile files use the TOML syntax. The only required key is the Regex to parse token with. Ex.

regex = "<<(.*?)>>"

will match <<TOKEN>>. You can then add all the tokens you want as variable inside the profile file. If TeXMan matches a <<TOKEN>> but with no defined variable inside the profile file, it will simply output TOKEN in its place.

Example Profile

regex = "<<(.*?)>>"
NAME1 = "Dimitri Bonanni-Surprenant"
NAME2 = "Teammate"
CLASS = "Relativité Générale"
CODE = "PHQ615"
PROF = "The Teacher"
UNIVERSITY = "The university"
EMBLEM = "The Emplem File to use"
FACULTY = "Science"
DEPARTEMENT = "Physics"

Variable names could be lower case.

Installation

Requirements

TeXMan is written in Rust, a Rust compiler is needed. Cargo is the recommended way to compile this project, as there are many dependencies inside the Cargo.toml.

Arch Linux

For Arch users, there is a PKGBUILD available in the repository. For instruction on how to use such file, please refer to the arch-linux wiki. The file available on the main branch main be outdated with the wrong version number and md5sums, but there are tested ones in each release version. If you wish to use the developpement branch, simply update version in the Cargo.toml and publish.sh, then run the publish.sh script. This will build the relevant archive to make the package.

Other Unix Systems

To install TeXMan on a Unix based system, simply

make
sudo make DESTDIR="/" install

To understand where this installs the program, you can refer to the Makefile. You can specify another place to install TeXMan by specifying another DESTDIR. This package will not be followed by your package manager when installed this way.

Quick start

Once installation properly done, verify that texman is in your path. Then, you can use TeXMan with templates present in your specified template directory.

Assuming you have the template homework inside your template directory, with profiles default.profile and quantum.profile;

• You can apply the template to a directory with the default profile

texman spawn homework <OUT_DIR>

• You can apply the profile quantum

texman spawn homework <OUT_DIR> -p quantum

Features

• You can list the available templates inside your template directory with

texman template -l

Available Templates:
        "homework"

• You can list the available profiles inside the homework template with

texman template -p homework

Available Profiles:
        "default.profile"
        "quantum.profile"

TODO

• Have a customizable regex to replace token.
• [] Have sensible defaults in /etc/texman.conf
• [] Support parameter tokens.
• [] Support variable number of file. (Ex. the are 3 questions in a homework, spawn 3 files.)
• [] Setup Docker test environnement (or other test environnement, I don't think cargo test will be sufficient in this case.)

Credits