Can latexmk generate a DVI file with lualatex or an XDV file with xelatex without generating a PDF

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Background: I am the developer of IguanaTex, a PowerPoint add-in to insert LaTeX displays in Powerpoint. I would like to let my users generate SVG files using dvisvgm via either a DVI file or an XDV file, because PDF can lead to issues in the generated SVG file. Some of my users want to use lualatex or xelatex, and some of them also want to rely on latexmk in order to produce correct cross-references.

latexmk supports xelatex and lualatex, but the main target output is PDF, and I could not find a way to only output either a DVI or an XDV file.

For xelatex, I can use latexmk -pdfxe -pdfxelatex="xelatex --shell-escape %O %S" foo.tex to generate both XDV and PDF.

For lualatex, I can use latexmk -pdflua -lualatex="lualatex --shell-escape -output-format dvi %O %S" -e "$dvipdf='dvipdfmx %O %S'" foo.tex to generate both a DVI and a PDF.

In both cases, I don't need the final DVI to PDF conversion step and would like to skip it for efficiency. Is there a way to do this?

Best Answer

Latex maintainer here. You can get latexmk to use lualatex to produce a dvi file (with no by the following

latexmk -dvi -pdf- -latex="dvilualatex --shell-escape %O %S" foo.tex

That is you tell latex to make a dvi file, but to use dvilualatex where by default it would use latex.

With the present version of latexmk, there's no simple way of using it to produce an xdv file without also making a pdf file.

I'll take this question as a feature request for options to achieve what is asked for, perhaps -dvilua and -xdv.

Postscript (23 Apr. 2022): I've added these features to the development version of latexmk, and they will appear in the next release.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Use MiKTeX option through latexmk

I've made a new version of latexmk, which supports -aux-directory and -output-directory. It's v. 4.27a and can be found at

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~collins/latexmk/versions.html

This version ~~will be submitted to CTAN fairly soon, but some feedback would be useful, since I have not tested the new features extensively, especially as I don't have current access to MiKTeX~~ or a more recent one can be found on CTAN as well.

Latexmk now has options -auxdir, -aux-directory, -outdir, and -out-directory, plus corresponding configuration variables $aux_dir and $out_dir. See the documentation for more details. To achieve what the original poster wanted, it's sufficient to put

$aux_dir = 'C:/Users/doncherry/Documents/LaTeX/AUXI_global';

in a latexmkrc file. (I've used forward slashes in directory names since these are acceptable to MS-Windows, and avoid running afoul of quoting conventions.)

I've done some tests with the -output-directory option, and the only problem that needs sorting out is that the combination of biblatex with bibtex doesn't work because a file needed by bibtex isn't in its usual place. (Biblatex with biber works, as do ordinary uses of bibtex.) If you don't use biblatex, the last issue doesn't affect you.

[Tex/LaTex] latexmk with xelatex xdv mode

Important update to old answer

The old answer (below) was appropriate when it was written (in April 2014), but it uses a nasty trick. Since then, changes in latexmk's support of xelatex were made, starting in v. 4.52. Latexmk now does exactly what the question asked for, without any special configuration. For details, see the latexmk documentation, in the explanations of the option -pdfxe and the variable $xelatex.

So if you invoke a current version of latexmk by latexmk -pdfxe or latexmk -xelatex, it will now do exactly what was asked.

Old Answer

With the present latexmk, a simple trick is to arrange to treat this by the dvi-pdf route for making pdf files. You do this by getting the 'xdv' file copied to a 'dvi' file. The following lines in an initialization file implement this:

$pdf_mode = 3;
$postscript_mode = $dvi_mode = 0;
$latex = 'xelatex --no-pdf %O %S && cp %Z%R.xdv %D';
$dvipdf = 'xdvipdfmx %O -o %D %S';
$clean_full_ext .= ' xdv';

The definition of $latex is appropriate for UNIX-like operating systems (e.g., linux and OS-X), and will need to be changed for MS-Windows.

Given the improved performance by this method, I should enhance latexmk to do it properly, with a -pdfxdv option in addition to its current -pdfdvi option.

Notes

The tail && cp %Z%R.xdv %D of the command line defined in $latex uses an idiom of the sh/bash shells: The part to the right of the && is run only if the command on the left (i.e., xelatex) succeeded. The cp part does the copying (under UNIX-type operating systems) of the xdv file to the dvi file. %Z denotes the output directory with any necessary trailing separator, %R denotes the rootname of the 'tex' file, and %D denotes the destination file, i.e., the dvi file; these will be replaced by the correct values by latexmk, as explained in its documentation.