Compiling a LaTeX document manually

Question

I've created LaTeX documents before using 'nice IDEs' such as TeXnicCenter and have a little experience in general with TeX, however, now I'm wondering about creating one "manually". By that, I mean doing something such as writing the tex document in a very simple editor (such as VIM) and then compiling it myself with pdflatex via the command prompt. Has anyone ever done this and if so, I really just need to know how I'd go about it? What's the process to doing it? While the IDE is nice, I'd really like to be able to create LaTeX documents 'on my own'. Thanks for any information you can provide!

Answer 1

Your question is a little confusing. What you mean is compiling a LaTeX document manually (into a PDF). You might want to adjust your title. Creating one would be the process of writing the document. This can be done in the command line using pdflatex <filename>. In VIM you could just use ESC:!pdflatex % (% can be used instead of the current filename) when you edit the main file. There is also the LaTeX Suite for VIM which gives you short cuts for the compilation and a lot of IDE functionality. The LaTeX compiler must be in your PATH for this to work, but this should be already the case for a proper installed LaTeX.

The latexmk script (also called with the filename) will compile the LaTeX document as often as required and also run external tools like bibtex and makeindex, which is basically the things the IDE is doing automatically when you press the compile button.

Answer 2

Here is a basic tutorial for a Unix-like system (tested on Debian GNU/Linux). Yes, one can use latexmk, arara, shell scripts, or editor functions to automate much of this, but I wanted to demonstrate the simplest way to write and compile a LaTeX file "by hand" in the terminal.

• Open Terminal emulator
• Enter a directory where you will create your files. Type the command cd /tmp, or instead of /tmp another directory you have permission to write to, like ~/Documents/.
• Open the text editor in the terminal. Enter one of these commands:
  • nano hello.tex (easiest to use for first time)
  • vim hello.tex
  • emacs hello.tex
• Within the editor, type in the following code:

(file hello.tex:)

---

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\title{Hello and Goodbye}
\author{Your Name}
\date{\today}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\section{Hello}
Hello, world!
\section{Goodbye}
Goodbye, world!

\end{document}

---

• Save the file in the editor and quit the editor. Check for the file you created by listing the directory contents: ls.
• Compile the document. Run pdflatex twice to get the table of contents. (Remember, in most terminals you can use the Up arrow on the keyboard to get the most recently entered command.)

pdflatex hello
pdflatex hello

• View the PDF you created. Use any PDF viewer: mupdf hello.pdf or evince hello.pdf (on Mac, open hello.pdf)

This procedure then continues: edit the file in the text editor, compile the file, preview the PDF.

You can make this system less cumbersome (depending on your perspective) by using a terminal multiplexer like tmux or screen, or just using multiple Terminal application windows. Then you can have one panel or window for editing the document in the text editor, and another panel or window for compiling it. If you have screen space, you can even keep a third window open with a PDF viewer; evince on Debian and Preview on Mac will update the PDF every time you recompile.

(PS - It's also a good idea to use git or another version-control program. At the end of your session make sure you add the new file, or any changes to files, to your repository and then push to your offsite backup repository.)

Answer 3

Create the file then compile it, just like you think you should. If your editor supports macros, define one (or two for Bibtex). However, I think it is better to stick with modern IDEs so you can take advantage of synchronized PDF previewing.

Answer 4

You can try AutomaticTexPlugin. It can compile documents on the fly or in the backround, so you do not waste the time, while waiting for the compilation. It also has a nice progress bar, which is serves well especially for big files. But the best point of this plugin is its excellent completion with lots of features (some people say that the only feature that is missing is that of writing the proofs by itself). Checkout the list of features (which is not even complete). The forward and backward search works out of the box for major linux and macos pdf viewers.