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Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Auctex, synctex and Evince


From: Jose Aliste
Subject: Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Auctex, synctex and Evince
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:52:08 -0400

Hi Ralf,

thanks for your answer, plese see  comments inline.

On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> wrote:
> * José ALISTE (2010-06-10) writes:
>
>> I recently added support for synctex in Evince (which is in process of
>> review by evince maintainer), and so I wonder how to integrate this work
>> with Auctex. Evince will have it's own synctex parser and will add a
>> DBUS method for forward search and a DBUS signal for backward search.
>> Since I don't have experiences with auctex, I would like to know if
>> anyone is interested in implementing support in auctex to use this DBUS
>> interface  (I believe that you support a patched version of evince), or
>> provide some guidance in how to do this integration, or to provide
>> coments about the DBUS API we are using.
>
> Currently AUCTeX makes use of the -p command line option of Evince in
> order to advise it to open a document on a specific page.  The inverse
> (or backward) search is traditionally supported by letting the viewer
> call `emacsclient' with the respective options.  So both forward and
> inverse search is accomplished by using command line tools.
>
> Personally I haven't worked with DBUS in Emacs yet.  But at the time
> when I was thinking about support for DDE on Windows, the main challenge
> I saw was that AUCTeX only has a View command and no separate commands
> for updating the viewer or jumping to a particular position.  If one
> wants to stick to a single command for interacting with the viewer, the
> command would have to have some logic about when to start the viewer and
> when only to advise it to show a different page because it is already
> running.
Exactly, this seems that in DBUS we have the same challenge.

>
> In AUCTeX one can carry out a function instead of simply executing a
> command line when calling a viewer.  If the function can incorporate the
> logic hinted at above, then supporting DBUS should be no major problem.
> However, at least the forward search works fine via the command line at
> the moment.  What would be gained to implement it with DBUS?
>

The main reason is interoperability/ portability IMO. The main thing
about DBUS is that you get a fine control of the viewer. For instance,
you would call Evince only the first time, and then use DBUS to do the
forward search whenever you need to. DBUS is IMO the right way to go.
You could of course add new command line options to evince so that not
only you open the link in a page but also you highlight the
corresponding part in the pdf/dvi (and the first patches to evince did
that), but you would expose parameters that a normal user should not
known/use (from the point of view of Evince).

For backward search, in emacs you would listen to the DBUS signal
evince emits, and highlight the source that corresponds. Evince just
does not know which editor you are using, so the support is not tied
to any editor. You could do this again, using the command line,
passing the editor cmd to evince when you call it, but it seems a
little akward to do it this way (again, in my opinion).


Greets,


José



> --
> Ralf
>
>
>



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