How to pass a macro in externalized tikz?

Question

I experience a problem when I use tikzscale package to compile figures externally.

The minimal working environment is as follows.

The main.tex:

\documentclass[\myopts]{IEEEtran}

\usepackage{lua-visual-debug}
\usepackage{tikzscale}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,backgrounds,calc,patterns}
\usetikzlibrary{er}
\usepackage{tikz-3dplot}

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{currfile}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\usetikzlibrary{shapes}
\usepgflibrary{shapes.geometric}

\usetikzlibrary{external}
\tikzexternalize[prefix=figure-build/]

% Use the package ifpdf to share one test document between pdflatex and latex
\usepackage{ifpdf}

\ifpdf
\else
    \tikzset{external/system call={latex \tikzexternalcheckshellescape -halt-on-error -interaction=batchmode -jobname "\image" "\texsource"; dvips -E -o "\image".eps "\image".dvi; ps2pdf "\image".eps "\image".pdf;}}
\fi

\begin{document}

\begin{figure*}[bth]
    \includegraphics[height=3.25in,width=5.25in]{FileDef-Fig}
    \caption{\small {text}}
\end{figure*}

\end{document}

The content of the file FileDef-Fig.tikz looks like:

\begin{tikzpicture}
........
\end{tikzpicture}

I compile this main.tex file by

pdflatex --shell-escape "\def\myopts{"conference,10pt"}\input{main}"

However, this command complains that the macro \myopts can not be found in the log file.

! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \myopts

This error message is reported in the following command when the figure is compiled by an automatically generated command:

pdflatex -shell-escape \
         -halt-on-error \
         -interaction=batchmode \
         -jobname "figure-build/main-figure0" \
  "\def\tikzexternalrealjob{main} \input{main}"

My question is how to add a \def\myopts{...} in the above pdflatex command to make it looks like:

pdflatex -shell-escape \
         -halt-on-error \
         -interaction=batchmode \
         -jobname "figure-build/main-figure0" \
  "\def\myopts{...} \def\tikzexternalrealjob{main} \input{main}".

Answer 1

You need to set \myopts for external system call, too.

Add \string\def\string\myopts{\myopts} in front of \texsource.

The \string writes the macros \def and \myopts as they are without expanding them (or trying to). The second \myopts should be expanded, of course.

(By the way, I have used

pdflatex --shell-escape "\def\myopts{conference,10pt}\input{<file name>}"

without the extra " in the \myopts definition.)

Code

\documentclass[\myopts]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{tikzscale}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usetikzlibrary{external}
\tikzexternalize[prefix=figure-build/]

% Use the package ifpdf to share one test document between pdflatex and latex
\usepackage{ifpdf}

\ifpdf
  \tikzset{external/system call={%
    pdflatex \tikzexternalcheckshellescape -halt-on-error -interaction=batchmode
      -jobname "\image" "\string\def\string\myopts{\myopts}\texsource"}}
\else
  \tikzset{external/system call={%
    latex \tikzexternalcheckshellescape -halt-on-error -interaction=batchmode
      -jobname "\image" "\string\def\string\myopts{\myopts}\texsource";
      dvips -E -o "\image".eps "\image".dvi; ps2pdf "\image".eps "\image".pdf;}}
\fi

\begin{document}
\begin{figure*}[bth]
    \includegraphics[height=3.25in,width=5.25in]{FileDef-Fig}
    \caption{\small {text}}
\end{figure*}
\end{document}