[TxMt] Re: latex bundle: handling pstricks and pst-pdf together

[Charilaos Skiadas]

You are not bypassing the latex bundle, you are simply indicating to  
the latex bundle what "engine" you want it to use to do the  
compiling, just as for instance you can tell it to use latexmk.pl  
instead of plain pdflatex. texMate.py will still be utilized, and the  
compilation window produced. All that changes is that your custom  
shell script is called under the hood instead of pdflatex, and that  
script does what is required of it.

I think Brad's reluctance stems from the fact that there are hundreds  
of tex packages, and we'd rather not implement a special compilation  
process for each of them within texMate.py, unless it is something  
that would benefit a large number of users. For instance this is why  
we support pstricks. I've lost the beginning of this thread, but is  
this pst-pdf to be treated just as if pstricks had been included, or  
is it a whole new beast requiring a new set of compiling directives?  
If it is the latter, then a better approach would be to get those  
directives incorporated in latexmk.pl for instance, in which case you  
would want to contact the author of that program. Since latexmk.pl  
specializes in performing all steps necessary to a latex  file to  
produce a final output, it would fall much more naturally under its  
responsibilities, and then this would benefit people not using  
TextMate as well.

Haris

On Nov 14, 2008, at 12:06 AM, Denilson Barbosa wrote:

> Thanks for the reply. As a quickfix this would alleviate the immediate
> problem, but create another, much worse: By bypassing the actual latex
> bundle (I mean, the compilation routines in texMate.py) one loses all
> of its functionality, including the compilation window that  shows the
> nice summary of what happened during the execution of (pdf)latex.
> Among other things, you'd have to look into the .log file yourself to
> find any errors in your source files, defeating the purpose of using
> textmate instead of the command line to run (pdf)latex.
>
> Handling pst-pdf could be easily implemented in a nice and elegant way
> inside the bundle. This would be a simple addition to run_latex (if I
> recall correctly the function name) in texMate.py to check if pst-pdf
> is included in the master file. Similar checks are made there for many
> packages already (including pstricks), so that different settings can
> be used when calling (pdf)latex. I can't see pst-pdf being any
> different.
>
> If implemented in this way, one would get back the nice results shown
> in the compilation window, which is produced by the procedure that
> parses the output produced by (pdf)latex. The parsing step could be
> done just on the final call to pdflatex on the main file.
>
> This seems easy enough to do for those who maintain the bundle. Not so
> for the majority of people who use it, including me. Being python
> illiterate I could only roughly understand what the bundle does, but
> not make this change.
>
> Denilson.
>
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Brad Miller <millbr02 at luther.edu>  
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I am curious to know how many people such an extension would  
>> benefit.  I
>> think one of the nice things about the Bundle as it stands now is  
>> that it
>> does the things that the majority of people want pretty well.   
>> And... it is
>> extensible enough for cases like this to be handled elegantly by  
>> the user.
>> For example:  These lines could be  re-written placed in a script  
>> file in
>> your home directory somewhere:
>>    latex <file.tex>
>>    dvips -Ppdf -o <file-pics.ps> <file.dvi>
>>    ps2pdf -dAutoRotatePages=/None <file-pics.ps> <file-pics.pdf>
>>    pdflatex <file.tex>
>>
>> The lines above would need to be re-written to use the TM_FILENAME
>> environment variable as follows:
>> #!/bin/bash
>> filebase=`basename -s .tex ${TM_FILENAME}
>> latex ${TM_FILENAME}
>> dvips- -Ppdf -o $filebase-pics.ps $filebase.dvi
>> ps2pdf -dAutoRotatePages=/None $filebase-pics.ps $filebase-pics.pdf
>> pdflatex ${TM_FILENAME}
>> rm $filebase-pics.ps
>>
>> Now, at the top of your latex file you can put the line:
>> %!TEX TS-program = /path/to/my/script
>> From now on the LaTeX bundle will use your script to typeset your  
>> file.
>>  Because the script is written using TM_FILENAME it will work for  
>> any files
>> you want to do this with.
>> If this is a common case, then I think it would be good to add to  
>> the Bundle
>> directly but if this is something only used by 1 or 2 people then  
>> I think
>> the solution above is the way to go.
>> Brad
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Denilson
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Brad Miller
>> Assistant Professor, Computer Science
>> Luther College
>> -- 
> Denilson Barbosa
>

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College