[Tex/LaTex] Dropbox & LaTeX compiling automation

automationcompilingmaconline

I'm in the middle of a "drop a file here and compile it using LaTeX" project. I have a Dropbox and I would like to drop a .tex file in a specific folder and have a script that compiles it for me. I'm on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). Can you point me on a .sh script or an Automator one (a tutorial would be good too) that compiles my documents into a .pdf file using pdfLaTeX?

How could I handle the LaTeX document dependencies like .sty, images, whatever?

EDIT: I posted the question on SuperUser and I found a good suggestion about using latexmk+folderactions, so go to Dropbox + Latex: automated pdf compile [SU] for details.

Best Answer

You can add a Folder Action to your dropbox: when something new arrives it'll fire off an AppleScript to fire off the commands to compile the file.

In Finder, right click on the folder. Go to Services and then Folder Actions Setup. You can then select which action (you can add yours to show up in the options).

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to make Latexmk use makeglossaries

You need to write a configuration file that tells latexmk which files are interesting for the glossary and how to handle them. Fortunately, the author provides some sample rc files.

Putting

add_cus_dep('glo', 'gls', 0, 'makeglo2gls');
sub makeglo2gls {
    system("makeindex -s '$_[0]'.ist -t '$_[0]'.glg -o '$_[0]'.gls '$_[0]'.glo");
}

in ~/.latexmkrc (globally in your home directory) or ./latexmkrc (locally in your document directory) should do the trick.

[Tex/LaTex] “makeindex” in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

The following answer is compiled from the comments, so that we can remove this question from the "unanswered" list.

The problem you are describing is characteristic of a path problem with your shell profile. To determine whether you are able to run the makeindex command from the command line, you can do:

which makeindex

This should return: /usr/texbin/makeindex. If it doesn't, and returns nothing, then your TeX binaries aren't being found. (They are found by TeXShop because it sets its own path for all commands.)

To see what your path is, you can enter:

echo $PATH

This should return something that includes /usr/texbin; if it doesn't you need to fix that in your .profile or .bashrc file.

If you're using MacTeX 2008, you have a really old distribution. I would strongly encourage you to update to MacTeX 2011.

As egreg notes, for multiple indices the package imakeidx is useful, as it automates the run of makeindex. (He is the author of imakeidx.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to make Latexmk use makeglossaries

[Tex/LaTex] “makeindex” in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

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