[Tex/LaTex] Can you have the preview open while writing in TexShop

editorsmactexshop

I'm new to this and I'm trying to write a document in TexShop. I keep needing to check my work as I go but to do this I have to save my code, close the window, reopen TexShop, then use the Open for preview option to view it as a PDF to see what I'm doing. I've seen the option under window called Source <=> Window but when I press it, nothing actually happens. I'm using TexShop on Mac, by the way. There must be a simpler way to preview what I'm writing?

Best Answer

The preview window in TeXShop is created every time you compile your document. You should never really need to use the Open for Preview menu item (in fact, I had no idea it existed or what it did.)

So the typical window layout that most users use is to put their source on one side taking up half of the screen and move the preview window to take up the other half of the screen.

The following key commands are useful to know:

Command-T Compiles your document and displays the updated preview
Command-B Runs bibtex on your document (or biber if you set that to be the default bibliography program)
Command-1 Switches between the source and preview windows (in both directions)
Command-click in the source window, this will take you to the same approximate place in the typeset preview; in the preview window it will take you to the approximate place in the source (See What exactly is SyncTeX? for more details on how this works).

You can set the preferences to say how the windows are to be displayed when you re-open TeXShop. The two options are to remember the last position they were in, or to have them all open in fixed positions.

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[Tex/LaTex] Use TeXShop Preview window when different output-dir is set

Let me explain a little more the solution suggested in my above comments. In TeXShop, you can choose which "engine" to call when pressing the Typeset button. An "Engine“ is basically a shell script which calls standard TeX commands, and sometimes much more (see the TeXShop help panel or this post for instance). In your case, modifying the pdfTeX command in the TeXShop Preferences changes the standard LaTeX engine. As a result of your modification, TeXShop cannot open the PDF preview automatically after typesetting. One way to restore this behaviour is to write a new engine.

To do so, you can simply create a shell script containing the following code

#!/bin/bash
pdflatex --output-dir=/tmp "$1"
open -a TeXShop /tmp/$(echo $1 | sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1\.pdf/')

Make sure the execution bit is active (chmod +x), change the extension to .engine and move the script to the ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines folder. Launch TeXShop and select your new engine in the popup menu next to the Typeset button, then press Typeset.

There may be a more elegant solution, but this works.

[Tex/LaTex] Aquamacs opening TexShop viewer instead of Skim

I had this same problem. I have a common Dropbox with someone else. Apparently he had set the default compiler to be latex --> dvips, as opposed to pdflatex. Aquamacs called TeXShop to deal with the ps output. The problem was solved by switching to pdflatex via selecting "Generate PDF" under TeXing options in the Command menu.

Best Answer

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