TikZ: compiling a standalone picture

Question

I am not sure if this is recreate-able through a MWE. Whenever I compile a standalone TikZ picture, it compiles all my standalone figures in the same folder. I am using Ubuntu 13.04 and Emacs with server mode running.

Some of this information may be irrelevant, but I am not sure what is needed to troubleshoot such an issue. From the screen shot, I have the main document on the left and my TikZ picture I am creating on the right. As you can see, I compiled the figure and Latexmk compiled every other standalone .tex file too.

Output written on sunplanetspacecraft.pdf (1 page, 1117 bytes).
SyncTeX written on sunplanetspacecraft.synctex.gz.
Transcript written on sunplanetspacecraft.log.
Latexmk: Log file says output to 'sunplanetspacecraft.pdf'
Latexmk: All targets (sunplanetspacecraft.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (transferchoices.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (transfergeoa.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (transfergeob.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (trigidentities.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (twobodies3D.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (unitvec.pdf) are up-to-date
Latexmk: All targets (velcomp.pdf) are up-to-date

Latexmk finished at Thu Jul 25 14:12:06

I am compiling sunplanetspacecraft.tex and none of the files are related to the to this .tex file but yet they still were compiled.

I looked through the log file, but I didn't see anything that related to the other files Latexmk compiled. Below is my preamble in case that helps.

\documentclass[convert = false]{standalone}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ppl}                                  
\linespread{1.05}          
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}                                  
\usepackage{courier}                                                    
\usepackage{eulervm}                       
\normalfont
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}

\usepackage[usenames, dvipsnames, svgnames, table]{xcolor}                                             
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}

The reason I want to resolve this is because one of the another standalone TikZ pictures takes about 2minutes to compile which slows down compiling a simple picture.

---

This problem cropped up with another document. This time my document that calls all my standalones in it tried calling an unrelated standalone just because it was in the same folder.

So a MWE (concept) would be to have a a folder, in the folder at a main.tex, in the main.tex, you need have \usepackage{standalone}, then we have two cases:

1. create two standalones to be called in the main.tex and compile the first one. When you compile the second one, it will also compile the first one. This wont cause the problem I am having since you are probably creating simple documents (not an issue though). Just check the output to see if it compile the other one too. This will be the first issue at the top I mention. Create a folder called test.

   main.tex

       \documentclass{article}
       \usepackage{standalone}
       \usepackage{tikz}
       \begin{document}
       test
       \includestandalone{test1}
       \includestandalone{test2}
       \end{document}
   

   test1.tex

       \documentclass[tikz, convert = false]{standalone}
       \begin{document}
       \begin{tikzpicture}
         \draw (0, 0) -- (2, 0);
       \end{tikzpicture}
       \end{document}
   

   test2.tex

       \documentclass[tikz, convert = false]{standalone}
       \begin{document}
       \begin{tikzpicture}
         \draw (0, 0) -- (-2, 0);
       \end{tikzpicture}
       \end{document}
   

   So if I compile test2.tex, test1.tex compiles also. This hardly causes a slow down but you get the idea.

2. create a standalone not called in the main.tex, but this time don't add anything in the file. Just name it and save it no preamble. Even though this file isn't being called by the main.tex, compiling the main.tex file will try and compile this file that doesn't even have a preamble. It calls because it has a .tex extension. In the same folder, create test3.tex which is blank no pre-amble or code and save it. Now add a line to main.tex and compile. This should cause the error no \begin{document} in the main file. The document will compile fine though but will constantly have that error. main.tex is forcing the compiling of a blank .tex file even though it isn't included.

;; ============ Latexmk setup ==============                                        
(defun run-latexmk ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((TeX-save-query nil)
        (TeX-process-asynchronous nil)
        (master-file (TeX-master-file)))
    (TeX-save-document "")
    (TeX-run-TeX "latexmk"
                 (TeX-command-expand "latexmk -pdf %O %S" 'TeX-master-file)
                 master-file))
    (if (plist-get TeX-error-report-switches (intern master-file))
        (TeX-next-error t)
      (progn
        (demolish-tex-help)
        (minibuffer-message "latexmk: done."))))

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda ()
    (push
     '("Latexmk" "latexmk -pdf %S" TeX-run-TeX nil t
       :help "Run Latexmk on file")
     TeX-command-list)))

---

.latexmkrc setup:

$pdflatex = 'pdflatex --shell-escape -interaction=nonstopmode %O %S -file-line-error -synctex=1';

Answer 1

The difficulty is that both emacs/auctex and latexmk need to be configured, and there has been a confusion about what belongs where. Auctex invokes latexmk, and then latexmk has the job of invoking other programs, like pdflatex as needed.

The code in .emacs is for configuring emacs/auctex so that it will be able to call latexmk. It needs to contain

;; ============ Latexmk setup ==============                                        
(defun run-latexmk ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((TeX-save-query nil)
        (TeX-process-asynchronous nil)
        (master-file (TeX-master-file)))
    (TeX-save-document "")
    (TeX-run-TeX "latexmk"
                 (TeX-command-expand "latexmk -pdf %s" 'TeX-master-file)
                 master-file))
    (if (plist-get TeX-error-report-switches (intern master-file))
        (TeX-next-error t)
      (progn
        (demolish-tex-help)
        (minibuffer-message "latexmk: done."))))

(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook (lambda ()
    (push
     '("Latexmk" "latexmk -pdf %s" TeX-run-TeX nil t
       :help "Run Latexmk on file")
     TeX-command-list)))

Compared with the listing given in the question, there appears %s (with lower case) instead of %O %S and %S. The %s denotes the name of the source file on the command line used to start latexmk.

The code in .latexmkrc is for configuring latexmk. It needs to contain

$pdflatex = 'pdflatex --shell-escape -interaction=nonstopmode -file-line-error -synctex=1 %O %S';

This specifies to latexmk how to make the command line it uses to invoke pdflatex. The %O and %S (with upper case) say where to put extra options and the source file. Because of how pdflatex parses its command line, the %O %S needs to be at the end of the template for the command line.

This answer makes obsolete what appears in an answer to an earlier question on configuring emacs to use latexmk, at How to make `latexmk` run the appropriate amount of times However, the answers for a basic configuration of emacs given in another related question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199678/how-to-call-latexmk-in-emacs-and-jump-to-next-error are correct.