Hi,
I am maintainer of AUCTeX <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex>, a
TeX/LaTeX editing mode for Emacs. For several years, TeX has been
supporting the command line option "-src-specials" which embeds
"Source specials" into the DVI file. Specials are elements that carry
positional information for the backend.
AUCTeX now has a "Source Specials" mode in which it will call both TeX
and the previewer with special options in order to facilitate
navigation between source and viewer window.
I would like some future version to not hardcode the used viewers, but
rather use the system default (on unixoid systems typically configured
in /etc/mailcap), adding appropriate options for viewers known to
AUCTeX in order to facilitate things like Source Specials. Now on
systems like Ubuntu, evince is sometimes configured to be the DVI
viewer, yet does not support Source Specials which is quite a
shortcoming.
So this would probably lead to the strategy of using the system
previewer when TeX-source-specials-mode is disabled, but using xdvi
rather than evince (and hoping that it actually exists!) in case
TeX-source-specials-mode is enabled.
Of course, this is a less than satisfactory situation. Would there be
any chance of evince being able to support source specials in DVI mode
at some point of time?
To make this endeavor more worthwhile, I would be willing to help with
designing equivalent functionality for the PS and PDF formats and do
lobbying work on having them integrated with the Dvips and PDFTeX
programs. In that manner, evince would gain a killer argument for
preferring it also as PostScript and PDF viewer in connection with
TeX-related work.
Here are the explanations from the xdvi manual page:
SOURCE SPECIALS
Some TeX implementations or macro packages provide the
facility to automatically include so-called `source
specials' into a DVI file. These contain the line number,
eventually a column number, and the filename of the .tex
source. This makes it possible to jump from a .dvi file to
the corresponding place in the .tex source and vice versa
(also called `inverse search' - jumping from the DVI file to
the TeX file is also known as `reverse search', and jumping
from the TeX file to the DVI file as `forward search').
To be usable with xdvi, source specials in the dvi file must
have one of the following formats:
src:line[ ]filename
src:line:col[ ]filename
src:line
src:line:col
src::col
If filename or line are omitted, the most recent values are
used. The first source special on each page must be in one
of the first two forms, since defaults are not inherited
across pages.
You will need a TeX implementation that provides an
appropriate switch (e.g. -src) or a macro package (such as
srcltx.sty or srctex.sty, available from
CTAN:macros/latex/contrib/supported/srcltx/) to insert such
source specials into the DVI file.
For reverse search, the combination Ctrl-Mouse 1 will make
xdvi open an editor (the value of the -editor command line
option) with the file and the line number of the .tex
source. See the description of the -editor option for more
information and example settings.
For forward search, xdvi has a -sourceposition option that
makes xdvi jump to the page in the DVI file corresponding to
the given line (or the closest line having a source special)
of the specified file and highlight the found region. See
the description of the -sourceposition option for more
details.
More information on setting up various editors for use with
source specials can be found at:
http://xdvi.sourceforge.net/inverse-search.html
[...]
Here is the explanation of the respective command line option:
-sourceposition line[:col][ ]filename
This option makes xdvi search in the dvi file for the
place corresponding to the indicated line (and,
optionally, column) in the .tex source file, and
highlight the place found by drawing a rectangle in the
highlight color (see the -hl option) around the
corresponding text. In addition, when run with this
argument (and the -nofork option is not given, which
see), xdvi will always return immediately: if it finds
another instance of xdvi already showing dvi_file, then
it will cause that instance to raise its window and
move to the given place in the dvi file; otherwise it
will start up its own instance in the background. If
several instances of xdvi are displaying the respective
dvi file, the instance which was last raised to the
foreground will be used.
The space before filename is only needed if the
filename starts with a digit. When the space is used,
the argument needs to be encosed in quotes to prevent
the shell from misinterpreting the space as argument
separator.
This option requires that dvi_file be prepared with
source special information. See the section on SOURCE
SPECIALS for details on how to do this.
Here is a more detailed description of how the filename
in the -sourceposition argument is matched with the
filename in the source specials:
1. If neither of the filenames contains a path name
component, the filenames are compared ignoring the
`.tex' extensions in both filenames.
2. Otherwise, if one of the filenames does contain a
path component (e.g.: ./test.tex, ../test.tex,
/my/homedir/tex/test.tex or any combination of
these), both filenames are expanded to a full
path, with any occurences of ../ and ./ expanded,
and multiple slashes removed.
The pathname in the -sourceposition is expanded
relative to the current working directory of the
xdvi -sourceposition invocation, and the pathnames
in the source specials are expanded relative to
the path of the current DVI file being viewed.
The path names are then compared ignoring the
`.tex' extensions in both path names.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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