FasTeX

Description

FasTeX is a system of keyboard shortcuts for speeding up the typing of TEX from the keyboard. It replaces any keyboard shortcut by the equivalent TEX command or group of commands in LaTEX or AMS-LaTEX. The use of FasTeX can speed up the typical user's typing input by a factor of about 3. This speed up is achieved by not only faster inputting, but through the fact that it avoids simple typing errors.

This version of FasTeX, known as "FasTeX for WinEdt", favors only LaTEX (AMS-LaTEX) commands, there are no shortcuts for Plain TEX and AMS-TEX (unlike the original FasTeX for Mac and UNIX). This is, as far as I know, the first port of FasTeX to Windows. All shortcuts (around 1550) are implemented as WinEdt v6 Active Strings, this was made possible only now with the advent of WinEdt v6 since previous versions had a limit of 999 maximum active strings.

Usage

FasTeX does not conflict with normal English usage; however, versions of FasTeX suitable for foreign languages would require the replacement of certain shortcut names. To avoid language conflicts, FasTeX for WinEdt uses space bar twice to expand all shortcuts, for example:

beq  xph  lxa  ox  eq  intu  l0  hx  fu  fot  fof  xa  sq  pl  xh2  eb  spdt  eeq

If you typeset only in English you can (probably) change the trigger key to a single space bar inside FasTeX.ini and then load the changed script.

Installation

For WinEdt 6

Extract both ConfigEx and Macros directories to %b (or %B if you don't have a user profile). Note: it is safe to replace original folder contents when asked for.
Execute _install_FasTeX.edt Macro Script (Ctrl+F9) from %b\Macros\Active Strings\FasTeX directory.

Remember that %b usually maps to something like this:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\WinEdt Team\WinEdt 6

and %B maps to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\WinEdt Team\WinEdt 6

For WinEdt 7 and above

Open the macro file Install.edt in WinEdt, and execute it by choosing Macros | Execute Current Macro.

To uninstall, open the macro file Uninstall.edt in WinEdt (also available in %b\Uninstall\FasTeX folder), and then execute it by choosing Macros | Execute Current Macro.

Download

For WinEdt 6.0: LaTeX/FasTeX_6.zip

For WinEdt 7.x: LaTeX/FasTeX_7.zip

For WinEdt 8.x, 9.x: LaTeX/FasTeX_8.zip

The zip files also include further documentation:

An outline of the FasTeX system (published as an article, "Introduction to FasTeX: A System of Keyboard Shortcuts for the Fast Keying of TeX", in TUGboat Volume 16, Number 4, Proceedings of the Annual Tex Users Group Meeting 1995).
Alphabetical Listing of all FasTeX shortcuts (note that some shortcuts have changed after the publication of this document, so a small number of (implemented) shortcuts may differ from this file).

The original FasTeX is available for the Macintosh and UNIX from: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~fastex/.

Full docs are available at: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~fastex/fastex_docs.html.

Macro contributed by Bernhard Enders <bgenetogmail.com>