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As a beginner... I thought I had settled for the distraction-free Gummi; but now I'm unsure, as I gather it's not so great for larger, modularized documents, such as writing a thesis:

Gummi's live preview works great, as long as I'm working on a single main.tex, but not in the modular writing case, when I'm editing, say, chapter02.tex. What makes matters worse is that switching tabs resets the position of the preview.

Is there a LaTeX editor capable of synctexing a live preview when editing an

  • included,
  • inputted - or -
  • subfiled

chapter02.tex document?

giordano
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nutty about natty
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  • Possible duplicate of Real Time LaTeX – texenthusiast Apr 01 '13 at 23:41
  • @texenthusiast I'd be happy if it was: but do other Q&A's explicitly cover the question of modularized ("chapter02.tex") documents? As far as I can tell: unfortunately not (yet). – nutty about natty Apr 02 '13 at 06:09
  • Amount of complexity(text/math/graphics) in modularized documents like thesis,book,reports etc.. prevent to use live preview with synctex forward-backward search although it looks good to ears/eyes, but it's not practically possible due to compilation load with synctex interaction delay etc.. Till date very few people use a live-preview editors may be for simple examples(less complex). Don't wait for a miracle tool to fall from heaven to start learning latex. Start with simple IDE like TeXworks/TeXmaker and over time you settle with emacs/vim. – texenthusiast Apr 02 '13 at 06:52
  • @texenthusiast You're right about not to wait for a miracle tool; after all, I'm working against a thesis deadline; and who would know how long it'll take for the miracle to arrive? The Gummi developer(s) informed me, that my feature request is (and has) already been in the making, though a release date could not be given as yet. Timeframe: "I hope soon" ;-) For now, I'll be writing chapter02.tex in plain gedit (or geany), and compile/non-live-preview with/via/through Gummi... – nutty about natty Apr 03 '13 at 08:09

2 Answers2

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Edit: This does not produce a live preview, but does work with synctex on build.

Sublime Text 2 is a cross-platform text editor with support for plugins, one of which is LaTeXTools--you'll see the setup instructions there. ST2 is free to evaluate and see if it works for you. Synctex works as you describe after setting it up in Sumatra.

LaTeXTools supports modularised files by inserting the following comment at the top of modular files. You can see in my example relative directories are supported.

%!TEX root = ../main.tex
\chapter{Models}\label{ch:models}
\section{Aerothermal}
RazerM
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I created a plugin for neovim called KNAP (Kevin's Neovim Auto-Previewer) that has a live preview, works with subdocuments (see Setting a Different Root Document in the README), and supports syncTeX, using your choice of PDF viewers. I made it with LaTeX chiefly in mind, but you can also use it for Markdown and other document types.

But it's geared to Linux, not Windows, unfortunately. Not sure how much work would need to be done to make it work on Windows.

Moreover, the README (shown on the Bitbucket homepage) has instructions for setting things up with a number of open source viewers. This information might be useful for others trying to configure things for a different editor and not my plugin in.

frabjous
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