Is there any way to get real-time compilation for LaTeX?

Question

I would really love to have a software or tool which provided real time compilation of my LaTeX document (to be able to see the final pdf or dvi document as I type the latex code), especially for when I am drawing pictures using tikZ. So far, I know of two things, but none of them work for me. They are:

• KtikZ: This is only for tikZ, which would be perfect for me, but unfortunately as far as I know it only works with Ubuntu and Debian, and I use Mac OS X (so I have never actually tried it, though I did dig a lot to see whether I would be able to install on my mac and from what I see it is really what I want - I am even considering installing Ubuntu just to use it!).

• WhizzyTeX: This is a minor mode for Emacs. It was extremely hard to get it to work on the mac (see my quest here), and it is not all that fast. The speed is not all that big of a deal for me, but the fact that it does not work with tikZ pictures is (the nodes all collapse in one point so that the words are all one on the top of the other).

So my question is: is there a software ideally like KtikZ or another type of editor which provides real-time compilation and that I can use on my mac? I guess if you know of a Windows/Linux option I would also like to know, and the same for a way to set up a script to get the document compiled every 5 seconds or so (I am sure I have seen this written somewhere, but I don't know whether I can do it with a mac or whether it is editor/pdf viewer dependent), but what I really want is a software/tool which would work with a mac.

To be clear, I am not after something like LyX, that is, I am not after a WYSIWYG-type thing, but rather something where I can type real LaTeX and see my code, but have at the same time another window showing me the pdf (or dvi) file compiled.

Answer 1

On a Mac, you can of course just open up a terminal, cd to the directory where you keep the TeX file, and issue

while true; do sleep 5; latex -halt-on-error filename.tex; done

and have the DVI file open in a viewer that watches for (and reloads on) changes. The one-liner runs latex continuously with 5 second break between runs (the -halt-on-error options prevents the incantation from getting stuck if you saved a file with errors). You can also swap in pdflatex instead.

This solves half of your problem. The other half has to be dealt with by your editor of choice. You need to set it up to automatically save the file every x seconds, and how to do that depends on the editor at hand.

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Now, that one-liner I gave above is quite ugly and resource wasting, since it makes no sense to re-compile if no changes are made (Edit: See this comment below for a much better way to avoid this problem). So you can do something like

while true; do sleep 2; if [ filename.tex -nt filename.log ]; then latex -halt-on-error filename.tex; fi; done

which watches for changes to the TeX file (signaled by the fact that filename.tex is more recently modified than filename.log) and compile when necessary (with a possible two seconds delay).

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Short of a WYSIWYG, I am not quite sure how you can achieve full real-time solution. Compiling the code takes usually a short amount of time (1 or 2 seconds, or more if the file is large). So if you are looking for a solution that calls the LaTeX compiler, it probably shouldn't try to do it more often than once every 5 or 10 seconds. So you won't be able to immediately see what you typed in the DVI window. Also, if the editor autosaves the file in a spot where you are halfway typing a command, then the source won't compile.

With LaTeX I feel that the better idea is "compile-on-saves", where the human initiates the saving of the file (as compared to "automatically saving and compiling in the background). For that, modern editors can generally support hot-keys where saving and compiling is mapped to one keystroke. In vim I map F2 to compile and F4 to call XDVI.

Answer 2

Latexmk has an option that will compile your document every time you save it. It requires Perl. There is also some very useful information in this Stackoverflow question about how to work with latexmk when you document has errors (which can happen a lot with TikZ).

Answer 3

Claus Gerhardt's Flashmode offers live preview for TeXShop on MacOS. From that page:

Flashmode enables simultaneous typesetting if TeXShop is used as editor for TEX or LATEX or any other common TEX variant. When Flashmode is started, it looks for the front most document in TeXShop, gets its path and after that it is hooked forever to this document as long as it stays open, i.e., a few split seconds after Flashmode has started the front most document in the TeXShop could be anything without doing any harm.

Then Flashmode checks in regular intervals (default is 0.2 sec), if its tex document has been modified, and if so, it initiates a save, a pdflatex run, and asks TeXShop to refresh the corresponding pdf file. Flashmode can be invoked even if a document isn’t typeset yet, but beware that its first action will be a typesetting command.

An important feature is that tex syntax errors don’t cause any error messages or disruptions of any kind, i.e., the pdf gets never corrupted, at least the pdf viewer is never aware of it, and the last refreshment is always visible; the pdf viewer will never complain.

Thus, the user never gets any error messages; the presence of errors can only be deduced from the pdf window which then doesn’t change any more; of course the errors will be reported in the log file and can be looked up.

Answer 4

Linux has a relatively new editor called Gummi that gives real-time output. Unfortunately it has crashed a few times for me (which is a few times too many). I plan to watch this editor closely as it becomes more stable.

I currently use Ktikz to edit my LaTeX documents in real-time. By default only tikz pictures are compiled, but by simply writing an empty template with the text

<>

ktikz will compile an entire LaTeX document.

Answer 5

Bakoma-TeX (http://www.bakoma-tex.com/) has a "true Wysiwyg" interface. Stable for Windows and "test" versions for Mac and Linux. You can find a favorable review at http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/latex/BAKOMA.HTM.

I sometimes use it, although I usually do not think it is worth the bother. TeXworks and frequent recompiling work well enough for me.

Answer 6

WhizzyTeX was mentioned in the question with the remark (emphasis added):

The speed is not all that big of a deal for me, but the fact that it does not work with tikZ pictures is (the nodes all collapse in one point so that the words are all one on the top of the other).

I'd like to counter that by pointing to a question: How can I execute a macro for every node in TikZ? where the aim was to figure out how to make TikZ nodes "draggable" in the WhizzyTeX-ADvi combination. I've now used that combination successfully to "fill in" a PDF form so can confirm that it works. Thus WhizzyTeX does work with TikZ pictures. It may need some development to get it to work in full - I've only used it in a rudimentary fashion - but certainly for nodes then it worked just fine.

Edit I just looked at the WhizzyTeX developer's homepage where it is clearly stated:

WhizzyTeX --- Version 1.3.2 of Aug 2, 2011 (works with pgf and beamer)

Answer 7

The LaTeX editor Kile now offers a live preview feature in its development version. It's still experimental.

Requirements:

• PDFLaTeX with SyncTeX support (offered by TeX Live 2010 and 2011, for example)
• Development version of the Okular viewer
• Development version of Kile

More details can be found here: Live Preview with Kile.

Answer 8

there exists only one real WYSIWIG editor http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/win32/microimp/microimp.pdf, which was the first and last try to create one for LaTeX. In general: it is not possible to have a WYSIWIG editor! A user can overwrite anything of the existing code or define anything new. This makes it nearly impossible to write such an editor.

What you can have is an editor which runs in the background ???latex when the source code changes. But this implies two windows, input and output, like Gummi does: https://github.com/alexandervdm/gummi

Answer 9

You may opt to use tikzedt.

Features:

1. Syntax highlighting and code completion, based on AvalonEdit.
2. Real time rendering, using pdflatex and mupdf.
3. It contains a Tikz parser, built using the Antlr parser generator.
4. Parsed coordinates are displayed as an overlay on the rendered image. The overlay can be edited with the mouse in a WYSIWYG manner. The source code is updated accordingly.
5. It comes with a snippet library to store frequently used commands and styles, containing many pre-defined examples.

According to the New features in version 0.2.2 of tikzedt:

One can use an external pdf renderer (mupdf) for better rendering quality. To do this, copy mudraw.exe into Tikzedt's program folder and change the rendering method in the settings. Customization of editor font. Version for Linux, and MacOS (to be tested) Bug-fixes

[Edit: For Mac OS X, see this page.]

Another option may be to use TikZ-Editor

The features include:

1. simplistic and dedicated GUI : Tikz Editor is only about TikZ.
2. Syntax highlighting for TikZ/Latex sources.
3. Real-time preview of figures.
4. Customizable code snippets.
5. Feedback of LaTeX typesetting errors using source annotations and margin markers.
6. Separated edition of TikZ source and LaTeX preamble.

Answer 10

Overleaf (Web)

Overleaf is the new collaborative writing and publishing system developed by the team behind the popular writeLaTeX editor. Overleaf is designed to make the whole process of writing, editing and producing scientific papers much quicker for both authors and publishers.

BaKoMa TeX

BaKoMa TeX is an innovative TeX/LaTeX implementation with BaKoMa TeX Word - a Visual (True WYSIWYG) LaTeX Editor.

Kile

Kile is a user-friendly TeX/LaTeX editor for the KDE desktop environment. KDE is available for many architectures and operating systems such as PC, Mac, and BSD, including Linux and Microsoft Windows.

Currently, the following three experimental features are under development:

• live preview
• user-configurable menu
• extended scripting interface

Answer 11

TexShop (also available through MacPorts) does a save on compile. It has a preview window so you can see your compiled document as you go.

Answer 12

Latexian offers a live preview on OS X.

Answer 13

MacKichan's SWP, SW, and SN are WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) editors, which do not give you the compiled pdf or dvi file without compiling, but compared to a source code the view is quite advanced. There are trial downloads available: http://www.mackichan.com/licensing.net/dnloadreq.aspx, but frankly I would wait purchasing it until the next version (which shall include eTeX and the ability to update everything to the latest versions at CTAN instead of being frozen at - , well, I guess it is 2002?).

Answer 14

As a completely different option you might want to consider, it is also possible to use an editing program that exports TiKZ files. This may be perhaps the most responsive option, unless you have a super-zippy machine to run TeX. As mentioned by Andrew Stacey in an answer to an earlier question, the Inkscape extension inscape2tikz generates TiKZ output. If you don't care too much about the readability of the TiKZ code this would be worth a look.

Answer 15

I can recommend a program similar to Ktikz, CirKuit, which I've been using successfully for quite a while. It enables you to create not only TikZ pictures, but also circuit diagrams using the Circuit macros.

Answer 16

Texpad developers here. In case it helps: On OS X, Texpad features Auto-Typeset that detects a pause in typing and sets a typeset operation off. The feature is configurable and you can try it out in the demo at texpadapp.com/osx.

Answer 17

I have made a live preview plugin for WinEdt editor. It will show the preview of current paragraph in the upper right corner of WinEdt. Furthermore it will update the preview automatically if current paragraph has been changed.

Answer 18

I made a plugin for Neovim called KNAP (Kevin's Neovim Auto-Previewer) that provides a live compiling/live-updating preview of LaTeX files in the PDF viewer of your choice.

It works also with Markdown, HTML or other files you configure, though I made it with LaTeX in mind chiefly. It also supports SyncTeX (so long as the viewer does), subdocuments, etc.

The readme (main page on bitbucket) has configuration instructions for quite a few different PDF viewers, and the information there might be of some use even for people who don't want to use neovim/my plugin, and want to configure some other editor or tool.

Only tested on Linux, at least by me!

Answer 19

The best and by far most complete attempt towards live preview I have seen so far has been the iTeXMac project. It does not only provide instant preview – optionally even the editor cursor position is visualized in the PDF preview as you type, which comes pretty handy when editing a complex formula or table!

Unfortunately, the project seems to be dead :-( The current beta claims "Tiger-Compatibility" and there hasn't been any progress for years. It probably still runs on current OS X versions (my last test was with Leopard or Snow Leopard), but is too unstable to be usable for serious work. Nevertheless, I still consider it as a good lesson on what to dream for :-)

Answer 20

TeXlipse automatically compiles the document on save and I usually have the PDF open (in Preview on Mac OS X or in evince on Ubuntu 10.04, which both automatically show the updated PDF if it is changed).

Answer 21

Regarding some additional options, for Mac OSX (10.11 or newer), there's this program: Compositor (check on current pricing).

A review from Jan., 2018 of LaTeX and WYSIWYG/WYSIWYM editors is found here.

Wikipedia has produced a comparison of editors (see the "Integrated viewer" table column).

Answer 22

I made a simple python script that automates recompiling based on file change. Github link.

All you have to do is run script with specified arguments:

python compiler.py [file_path] [output_directory]

More info can be found in readme file.

Answer 23

The problem of fast document update is TeX core&idea itself -- TeX is interpreted programming language by design.

So the problem is thru-whole-document dependency: every section depends on data with all previous sections defined by sequential document execution from start to end.

Thus for the thing you want is it required totally rewrite TeX core from scratch. Technically TeX render engine must track source file changes, split them into isolated pieces, store them in in-memory graph database may be, with dependency info, and every time you save, it must rebuild resulting preview in update manner, walking thru dependency graph.

Another thing is an endpoint of preview output: component shows ready page must support direct partial update using some sort of bitblt overlay, can be done on modern GPU at a hardware level.

Or we should look on JavaScript: DOM document model in a browser by design support dynamic partial update, and a lot of effort was done by browser authors to make this subsystem totally fast. So some render server runs locally on your workstation, can update document elements view in parallel and update DOM in a browser via an async interface.

Is anybody here has some experience on DIY TeX core (it will be fun to do it on in-browser JavaScript), but it will be a huge effort on coding, and especially on making it compatible with a large set of packages.

As the starting point to write your fast render engine I can point on this large manual on implementing (La)TeX:

The Computer Science of TeX and LaTeX (c) Victor Eijkhout

can be downloaded in .PDF https://bitbucket.org/VictorEijkhout/the-science-of-tex-and-latex/downloads/TeXLaTeXcourse.pdf

Going thru this manual it is possible to write some limited version of TeX compatible with your documents and chosen render system able to update content on the fly part by part. For example, you can write fast latex2html converter, like I'm trying to do it now (package in Debian Linux not works for me especially with lstlistings).

If you want to be really fast, avoid using any disk files as much as possible, and do all thing in RAM only, using some GUI toolkit for render output (Qt,wxWidgets,..): flex/bison generated parser (or some other syntax parser library, like PLY for Python) able to parse from text strings.

Answer 24

Vim with VimTeX + AutoSave plugin

• VimTeX: from the question LaTeX Editors/IDEs
• AutoSave plugin: https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4521

Usage: On a TeX file, press \ll to start the compiler. Every time the TeX file is saved, the PDF will be automatically recompiled.

Optionally run :AutoSaveToggle to save the file every time the buffer changes.

Of course this uses latexmk under the hood (other build systems are also supported, check the README).

Personally, because normally each compilation takes more than 0.1 second (although there are a few ways to speed it up slightly), I think it's inconvenient to recompile on every keystroke. Instead, when I need recompile, I just explicitly save the file.