Re: [AUCTeX] OT: Have a look at PDF Tools (new PDF viewer for Emacs)

[Tassilo Horn]

Mosè Giordano <address@hidden> writes:

>> just in case you didn't already know PDF Tools
>>
>>   https://github.com/politza/pdf-tools
>>
>> you might want to give it a whirl.  It's a new PDF viewer for Emacs
>> which is somehow similar to Emacs' built-in `doc-view-mode', except that
>> it is much more advanced.  For example, you can
>>
>>   - mark and copy text in the PDF
>>   - click links in the PDF
>>   - have a TOC/outline in the menu bar
>>   - isearch with match-highlighting
>
> It looks very promising, thanks!
>
>> and tons of other features.  Oh, and forward/backward search work out of
>> the box with AUCTeX/SyncTex.
>
> Well, we only need an appropriate entry in
> `TeX-view-program-list-builtin' then ;-)

Yes, definitively.  Although finding the pdf once and then just using
`C-c C-g' for forward search instead of `C-c C-c View RET' is as good,
IMO.

What we also need it support for viewing _region_.pdf with proper
SyncTeX support.  Right now, when double-clicking in _region_.pdf, you
jump to the correct location in _region_.tex.  It would be nice if you
jumped to the location in the real source tex file.  I've already
implemented that for Evince, so it'll probably be not too hard to do.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do that right now.

> When using forward/backward search in TeXstudio with its embedded
> viewer, you are direct to the exact word selected, not just the line.
> I wonder if it's possible to implement such a feature also for AUCTeX
> and pdf-tools.

I just edebugged the relevant function `pdf-sync-correlate-tex', and it
returns a list (file line column), so the answer is yes.  However,
column is always -1.  I have the same with the Evince backward search.
Maybe there's some SyncTeX setting you need to enable to make it record
column numbers, too?

Bye,
Tassilo