Drawing lines between parts of nodes in forest trees

Question

I am struggeling with one particular problem for years now. I try to draw arrows from a part of a node in a forest tree. Due to a bug in xelatex this does not work with the tikzmark package and the subnode command.

The topic was discussed here:

tikzmark and xelatex

fixing or replacing tikzmark/pgfmark/subnode within forest

I am too dumb for understanding the solutions. Some solutions seem to be outdated. The underlying bug in xelatex seems to be not fixed and pdflatex seems to have stopped working as well.

What I want to do is to connect all the Vs after the // with double arrows. This should work in a copy and paste-safe way. I can shift the arrows left or right, but when I change the font size, this breaks. Is there any solution to this? Of course the subnode solution would be the preferred one.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{forest}
\useforestlibrary{linguistics}
\forestapplylibrarydefaults{linguistics}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows} 
\tikzset{
    %Define standard arrow tip
    >=stealth'}
\newcommand{\sliste}[1]{%
\mbox{%
$\left\langle\mbox{\upshape\scshape #1}\right\rangle$}%
}
    \begin{document}



\begin{forest}
where n children=0{tier=word}{}
[S
  [{V \sliste{ S$/!/$V }},name=vini 
    [V,name=vlast [liest$_j$] ] ]
       [{S$/!/$V}, name=sv
           [NP [Conny] ]
           [{V$'$$!/!/$V}, name=v1v
             [NP [das Buch, roof] ]
             [{V$!/!/$V}, name=vv [_$_j$] ] ] ] ] ]
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.east) edge [bend left=44] (vv.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.north east) edge [bend right=44] (sv.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (sv.north) edge [bend right=24] (vini.north);
\draw[semithick,<->,color=green] (vini.south) -- (vlast.north);
\end{forest}
\end{document}

With a working subnode command, it should look like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz} \usetikzlibrary{tikzmark}
\usepackage{forest}
\useforestlibrary{linguistics}
\forestapplylibrarydefaults{linguistics}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows} 
\tikzset{
    %Define standard arrow tip
    >=stealth'}
\newcommand{\sliste}[1]{%
\mbox{%
$\left\langle\mbox{\upshape\scshape #1}\right\rangle$}%
}
    \begin{document}



\begin{forest}
where n children=0{tier=word}{}
[S
  [{V \sliste{ S$/!/$\subnode{vini}{V} }},name=vinix 
    [V,name=vlast [liest$_j$] ] ]
       [{S$/!/$\subnode{sv}{V}}, name=svx
           [NP [Conny] ]
           [{V$'$$!/!/$\subnode{v1v}{V}}, name=v1vx
             [NP [das Buch, roof] ]
             [{V$!/!/$\subnode{vv}{V}}, name=vvx [_$_j$] ] ] ] ] ]
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.east) edge [bend left=44] (vv.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.north east) edge [bend right=44] (sv.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (sv.north) edge [bend right=24] (vini.north);
\draw[semithick,<->,color=green] (vini.south) -- (vlast.north);
\end{forest}
\end{document}

Answer 1

After asking the question in a tikz-related form, I was pointed to this solution to a similar problem:

Draw connection between node in forest tree diagram and something outside it

I adapted it to my forest problem. The point I struggled with was that the drawing has to happen outside of forest, since the subnode coordinates seem to work only outside of the tree.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[linguistics]{forest}
\forestapplylibrarydefaults{linguistics}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning, tikzmark, arrows}
\tikzset{
    %Define standard arrow tip
    >=stealth'}
% WORKAROUND:

% Definition copied from /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pgf/systemlayer/pgfsys-common-pdf-via-dvi.def
% Compare https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/229500 and comments!
\makeatletter
\def\pgfsys@hboxsynced#1{%
  {%
    \pgfsys@beginscope%
    \setbox\pgf@hbox=\hbox{%
      \hskip\pgf@pt@x%
      \raise\pgf@pt@y\hbox{%
        \pgf@pt@x=0pt%
        \pgf@pt@y=0pt%
        \special{pdf: content q}%
        \pgflowlevelsynccm% 
        \pgfsys@invoke{q -1 0 0 -1 0 0 cm}%
        \special{pdf: content -1 0 0 -1 0 0 cm q}% translate to original coordinate system
        \pgfsys@invoke{0 J [] 0 d}% reset line cap and dash
        \wd#1=0pt%
        \ht#1=0pt%
        \dp#1=0pt%
        \box#1%
        \pgfsys@invoke{n Q Q Q}%
      }%
      \hss%
    }%
    \wd\pgf@hbox=0pt%
    \ht\pgf@hbox=0pt%
    \dp\pgf@hbox=0pt%
    \pgfsys@hbox\pgf@hbox%
    \pgfsys@endscope%
  }%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{forest}
where n children=0{tier=word}{}
[S
  [{V S$/!/$\subnode{vini}{V} },name=vinix 
%        [V,name=vlast [liest$_j$] ] ] does not work, has to be subnode
     [\subnode{vlast}{V} [liest$_j$] ] ]
       [{S$/!/$\subnode{sv}{V}}, name=svx
           [NP [Conny] ]
           [{V$'$$!/!/$\subnode{v1v}{V}}, name=v1vx
             [NP [das Buch, roof] ]
             [{V$!/!/$\subnode{vv}{V}}, name=vvx [_$_j$] ] ] ] ] ]
%    \path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.east) edge [bend left=44] (vv.east);
%    \path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.north east) edge [bend right=44] (sv.east);
%    \path[semithick,<->,color=green] (sv.north) edge [bend right=24] (vini.north);
%    \draw[semithick,<->,color=green] (vini.south) -- (vlast.north);
\end{forest}
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (vv.north)  edge [bend right=44] (v1v.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (v1v.north) edge [bend right=44] (sv.east);
\path[semithick,<->,color=green] (sv.north)  edge [bend right=24] (vini.north);
\draw[semithick,<->,color=green] (vini.south) -- (vlast.north);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Note that this solution breaks when multiple trees are in the same document. A solution is to put a tixmark prefix declaration before the image. E.g. \tikzset{tikzmark prefix=fig-German-v2}. This seems to open a new name space.