[Tex/LaTex] Need to restart TeXShop to use XeLaTeX

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I have a document that must be compiled using XeLaTeX. If I open TeXshop and compile this file first, everything is fine and it works. However, if I open a different file that is normally compiled with pdflatex, it will compile that fine. But if I now try to compile the file that requires xelatex, I get an error, since the console shows that it is trying to use pdflatex. I tried looking in preferences and telling it to use the xelatex command, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Also, if I compile the xelatex file first, and then try compiling the other one, it works fine, but the console shows that it was compiled using xelatex.

Any ideas on why it is behaving like this, and what I can do to switch between behaviors without restarting Texshop?

Best Answer

If your document to be compiled with XeLaTeX is in the front window, go to the “Macros” menu and select “Program”. A selection box appears

Choose the XeLaTeX line by clicking on it. TeXShop will add, as the first line in the document,

% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX

(which will appear colored in red). This will have the effect that XeLaTeX will be used to compile the document irrespective of what's shown on the drop down menu next to the “Typeset” button. It will be sufficient to push the “Typeset” button and the selected engine will be used.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to customize the default xelatex command in TexShop for OSX

You'll have a TeXShop Engines directory containing the shell scripts that are invoked whenever you hit the Typeset button. The script that's called depends which engine you have selected. For XeLaTeX it's usually ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines/XeLaTeX.engine by default.

It looks something like this:

#!/bin/tcsh

set path= ($path /Library/TeX/texbin /usr/texbin /usr/local/bin)
xelatex -file-line-error -synctex=1 "$1"

You can open it with a text editor and add the -shell-escape flag directly, like so:

#!/bin/tcsh

set path= ($path /Library/TeX/texbin /usr/texbin /usr/local/bin)
xelatex -file-line-error -synctex=1 -shell-escape "$1"

TeXShop will always call this script when XeLaTeX is selected, but you can save the changes to a new file, such as XeLaTeX-shellescape.engine. Both will appear in the menu and you'll be able to set the magic line to use this new script:

% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX-shellescape

[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.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to customize the default xelatex command in TexShop for OSX

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

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