HMCP Set, TextMate, and RoR 2.0

I found a great little LaTeX homework layout for typesetting math homeworks a while back, and I’ve meant to write it up for quite a while. It’s from Harvey Mudd College’s Mathematics Department, engineered to automatically satisfy the department guidelines on how homeworks should be laid out. They also have thesis and poster templates, but the homework installation proceedures and sty files are located on the Homework Class page. Their website also has extensive information on their computer resources. While basically useless for anyone not at Harvey Mudd, it is a model for how this sort of website should look. Everything is clearly detailed at the perfect level, along with suggestions not just for how to do certain tasks, but also when you might want to do something.

I tend to be a VIM guy for working with code, but for smaller scale LaTeX stuff(ie, homework writeups but not the 62-page monster I wrote for AMATH581), I’ve been using the TextMate program. It’s a bit expensive at about $50, but it takes it down to 1 keystroke to recompile the LaTeX file and view it. It’s also really good at working with directory hierachies. I believe I discovered it while toying with the programming language Ruby in their 15 minutes to a weblog screencast.

Turns out that the Ruby people have released a 2.0 15 minutes to a weblog screencast. This time they pull some punches(pasting code in), so it’s cheating a little bit, but they get a blog with an admin interface, AJAX comments(with an HTML-redirected fallback), and an ATOM feed all tied into one app, which I have to say is impressive even when you have stacked the deck. I hate to give up on Python for web stuff since I’m using it for a lot of other stuff nowadays, but it’s all pretty enticing. Find the video on the Ruby on Rails Screencast page.