[Tex/LaTex] Defining the pdf output file within the document file using %& -job-name

jobnamepdftex

My understanding is that if I create a file called noName.tex with the first line

%& -jobname=myName

then when I run pdflatex on that file, the output file will be named myName.pdf rather than noName.pdf, just as if I'd typed

pdflatex -jobname=myName noName.tex

But in the following example, the first line is ignored by pdflatex, and the output is named noName.pdf.

Here is noName.tex:

%& -job-name=myName
\documentclass{minimal}
\begin{document}
Hello World
\end{document}

Could somebody advise what the correct syntax would be please? Thanks very much.

The version of pdflatex I'm using is:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (TeX Live 2009/Debian) (format=pdflatex 2014.6.25)

Best Answer

The %& magic line has been supported by implementations of TeX from many years. However, the feature is implemented differently in the various TeX distributions.

Note that no editor/front-end I know of interprets such a line: this is specific for the TeX engine.

In TeX Live, the line can contain only the specification of a format to be loaded and a TCX file, see section 3.5.2.2 in the documentation of Web2c (texdoc web2c, page 11 for TeX Live 2015):

%&format -translate-file=tcxfile

Either part can be empty. Note that, in TeX Live, Knuth TeX doesn't honor this magic line.

As far as I know, other command line options such as -jobname can be specified with MiKTeX. They'll definitely not work with TeX Live.

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This is not exactly an answer to the question you asked, but do you know that R/ggplot2 can write out your charts as pdf files that can be \includegraphicsed? Just use pdf() instead of png() when setting up the output device, or if you're using ggsave(), give the file a .pdf extension instead of png. Then you get real text and vector graphics, which pdfTeX can scale without blurriness. Note: the width and height arguments to pdf() are in inches, not pixels. Also, you may have to delete the .png file to get pdfTeX to pick up the PDF.

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You can try creating your graphics using the tikzDevivce which lets TeX handle all of the typesetting. This will hopefully sidestep any font issues you are having as the text in your graphics will use the same font as the body text of your paper, which is displaying fine.

To install the package in R:

install.packages('tikzDevice')

Then make your graph as usual, except use tikz() instead of pdf() to start the plot output:

require(tikzDevice)
tikz('myAwesomeRPlot.tex')

# Your plotting code here

dev.off()

The output of the tikzDevice is a .tex file containing commands required to construct your plot using TikZ---an excellent graphics package for TeX, LaTeX and ConTeXt (however, our output is currently only compatible with LaTeX). To include your plot in a paper, use \input instead of \includegraphics:

% In your preamble:
\usepackage{tikz}

% Later on in your paper...
\begin{figure}
  \input{myAwesomeRPlot}
  \caption{Check out the spread on that distribution!}
\end{figure}

You can also pass the standAlone=TRUE option to tikz() and the resulting .tex file will be self-contained and can be typeset by LaTeX without including it in another document.

For more information and examples, check out the package vignette.

Hope this helps!

Addendum

It should be noted that the tikzDevice treats all plot text as LaTeX code. This allows you do do things like:

curve({x^2 / 2},-1,1,main="Plot of $y=\\frac{x^2}{2}$",ylab="$\\frac{x^2}{2}$")

And LaTeX will typeset the equations in your plot. This behavior has some consequences:

The backslash at the beginning of each LaTeX command must be escaped by another backslash as R treats backslashes as escape characters.
Any character that is special to LaTeX, such as #, $, %, ^, _, etc, must be escaped if you don't want it treated as a LaTeX command:
```
plot(...,main="I really want the dollar sign in \\$2.99!")
```
If LaTeX code in your plot text requires special packages, you need to make the tikzDevice aware of this. See the documentation of tikzLatexPackages in section 3.1 of the vignette for details.

Best Answer

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