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Textures & Alpha
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Alpha is a powerful programmable shareware editor that you, the user, can customize to your heart's content. It has a great Latex mode that uses the document structuring rules to make an intelligent editor. This is a truly programmable program; most of it is written in TCL. This also helps to make it quite memory efficient.
Our current TCL macros are written for Alpha 7.2 implement flash mode, synchronicity and follow focus modes. There are two limitations to the current TCL: There is no way to intercept command-click on the Alpha text window, so we use command-grave (on tilde key) to do the same thing. Also, flash mode is only activated by a space, not on every character. These will be enhanced as Alpha evolves.
Note: A problem has been recently discovered with Alpha 7.2 that causes it to run out of memory (a memory leak) after using it in Flash Mode for a while. Although we strive to help our clients in every possible way available to us, Alpha is not a Blue Sky product. We have no control over internal problems outside our own and for that reason we would like to suggest those of you encountering this problem to contact the Alpha developers via the Alpha-D newslist. Subscribe to ALPHA-D@listserv.syr.edu by sending the message SUBSCRIBE ALPHA-D to listserv@listserv.syr.edu.
To use Alpha 7.2 with Textures:
- Download full version of Alpha 7.2 (3,333 Kb) from their FTP site. We also have it available from our ftp server.You can download the lite version (1579 Kb) as well.
- Alpha should unstuff to give you a folder that looks like:
- Download our TCL macros for Alpha 7.2 at
- Open up the Alpha folder.
- Open up the folder named "Tcl".
- Open up the folder "Modes".
- Put the Blue Sky "latex Mode" folder into the "Modes" folder, replacing the other "latex Mode" folder.
- Next time that you open up Alpha, it will give you a warning that it needs to rebuild the package indicies (as shown below). Click OK, and wait a few seconds while it figures out what new files you have given it.
If you get this message, Alpha is unable to start Textures (it is asking for a list of formats to build the menu), so you need to start Textures first.
If you typeset and nothing happens, make sure you've chosen a format in Alpha first. This will put the name of the format as the first line of the TeX source file. If there is no format name, nothing will happen.
Visit the Alpha Home page for news about Alpha.
Write to us: help@bluesky.com.