I followed the Pathogen way to install snipMate and I did include
:filetype plugin on
in .vimrc as the home page of snipMate plugin suggested.
Now when I type fr in a .tex file and press TAB nothing happens as expected.
I also tried this one but even that one did not work.
What am I missing? I am using vim 7.4 from 2013 Aug 10.
The problem was that I blindly installed Pathogen with curl, but the link on that page was outdated. The proper link is https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/master/autoload/pathogen.vim. Also .vimrc should start with
execute pathogen#infect()
This solved the problem and now vim reacts to <TAB>.