Re: [O] Near real-time preview of PDF/ODT export?

[Torsten Wagner]

Hi,

just in a coincidence, I looked into Whizzytex [1] a few days ago.

This minor mode opens up a pdf-viewer and keeps it updated with
literally every keystroke within the tex-file. (Yes xpdf works, albeit
the website and emacswiki only describe dvi and ps as backends).
In addition, it adds some marks in the PDF to show the actual cursor
position wihin the tex-file.
You could see it as some sort of pdf-preview on drugs. That is a
realtime-update instead of an update after each compilation. WhizzyTex
tries to be smart and only seems to compile the region which is needed
to give you the output you would like to see.

This is very useful esp. if you do small corrections (like revising a
manuscript). Since you can see what effect your spellcheck corrections
and grammar twisting has on the document outcome. On the other hand,
if you receive a hand-annotated version of an manuscript is much
easier to find the parts which needs to be corrected having a
life-update beside the TeX-file.
Another area where I really like it is in conjunction with TikZ.
WhizzyTex gives you a online-update of your drawing. As people who
worked with TikZ now, it can be very cumbersome to get the right
coordinates for something. With WhizzyTex the position of drawings,
nodes and whatever, change instantly as you type it. This makes
drawing really easy.

On the downside, it seems a bit outdated. At least the installer gave
me a headache. The manual describes a manual installation method which
after some tweaking worked for me. There is no package on ELPA thus, I
have no idea about the actual status of it. Last update was on January
2013, not that long ago.

Would it be an option to implement something like WhizzyTex for org-mode?
Thus you would have the easiness of org-mode syntax (which is enough
for many cases) with an realtime update of the export to PDF.

[1] http://cristal.inria.fr/whizzytex/whizzytex.html

On 22 November 2013 15:51, Suvayu Ali <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 03:30:18PM +0100, Rasmus wrote:
>>
>> Personally, I'd want to use Evince and not Docview.  Does Docview
>> notice changes in the pdf?
>
> Only with auto-revert-mode on.  I prefer Evince over Docview too.
> Docview wait times can be significant when the pdf is large (~30), or
> when there is a large vector drawing in the pdf.
>
> --
> Suvayu
>
> Open source is the future. It sets us free.
>