Changing default dvi viewer.

Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

As I'm sure manyof you know, when working with latex a few C-c C-c
commands will compile the latex, bibtex and launch a dvi viewer. How
can I change the default dvi viewer from xdvi to kdvi?

cheers
Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 07.02.2008 um 12:28 schrieb David:

> How can I change the default dvi viewer from xdvi to kdvi?


By using the customisation interface of AUCTeX. See LaTeX menu ->  
Customize AUCTeX.

Consider to use a personalised copy of texdoc as viewer for  
everything TeX related.

--
Greetings

   Pete

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary  
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
		-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> By using the customisation interface of AUCTeX. See LaTeX menu ->  
> Customize AUCTeX.
> 
> Consider to use a personalised copy of texdoc as viewer for  
> everything TeX related.

Wow, my first reaction on seeing the multitude of options in the
customise auctex menu is that it's pretty user unfriendly. I have read
slowly through what was there but really nothing obvious jumped out
relating to dvi file and I can't loose a whole afternoon trying to
find that. Thanks Pete for the pointer, I'll save this one for a rainy
day.

cheers
Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 07.02.2008 um 16:30 schrieb David:

> Wow, my first reaction on seeing the multitude of options in the
> customise auctex menu is that it's pretty user unfriendly.


Did you extend the menu? If you just were browsing, there is nothing  
obvious – and I doubt that there is a way to customise viewer options  
from this. From the expanded menu via TeX Command you can see at  
least a "TeX Output View Style" ...

Is this ease of use one of the reasons it has't yet become part of  
GNU Emacs?

--
Greetings

   Pete       (:
         _    / __    -    -
       _/ \__/_/        -     -
      (´`)      (´`)   -    -
       `´        `´

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> Did you extend the menu? If you just were browsing, there is nothing  
> obvious ? and I doubt that there is a way to customise viewer options  
> from this. From the expanded menu via TeX Command you can see at  
> least a "TeX Output View Style" ...

Thanks Peter, at least I now know what my (practical) options are. So
it looks like there's no one-liner I can just slip into my .emacs
file. Finally C-c C-c followed by replacing the x of xdvi with a k
each time doesn't seem like such a bad stratergy.

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 07.02.2008 um 17:26 schrieb David:

> So it looks like there's no one-liner I can just slip into my .emacs
> file.

This is my impression of recent AUCTeX (11.84), too.

> Finally C-c C-c followed by replacing the x of xdvi with a k
> each time doesn't seem like such a bad stratergy.

Once you've customised and saved, you'll be done.

Again, think of using a customised texdoc as viewer not only for TeX  
documents, but also TXT, PS, PDF, DVI – *one* tool name instead of  
four. And once your taste changes, you won't need to customise AUCTeX  
again!

--
Greetings

   Pete

»¿ʇı̣ əsnqɐ ʇ,uɐɔ noʎ ɟı̣
ɓuı̣ɥʇʎuɐ sı̣ pooɓ ʇɐɥʍ«

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> Again, think of using a customised texdoc as viewer not only for TeX  
> documents, but also TXT, PS, PDF, DVI ??? *one* tool name instead of  
> four. And once your taste changes, you won't need to customise AUCTeX  
> again!

OK, so finally I get it!! I have added these lines to my .bashrc

## Set defaults for texdoc
export TEXDOCVIEW_html="mozilla %s"
export TEXDOCVIEW_pdf="xpdf %s"
export TEXDOCVIEW_ps="gv %s"
export TEXDOCVIEW_dvi="kdvi %s"
export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacs %s"

## Create alias for texdoc. I wanted "view" as my alias name, but that
## alrady existed. So I thought about "vyew" instead. This made me
## think "vitual sheep". So the alias name is now "vs".
alias vs='texdoc -v'



Now at the shell prompt I can just type

funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.dvi &

or 

funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.ps &

or 

funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.pdf &

and the right program is chosen for the job. Pretty cool. There are a
few points I still need to straighten out.

1) C-c C-c doesn't refer to texdoc. I'll have to find how to redirect
it. No no no, I got it!!! I just need to edit the entries in "tex
output view style" from the customise autex library (and hit the
"state" button). Horrah! Ah now the funny thing is I changed one of
the lines in the raised button customisation buffer to "%(o?)texdoc
%dS %d ## %(o?)xdvi %dS %d" but the environmental variable
TEXDOCVIEW_dvi as specified in .bashrc is not being used and a default
xdvi has been used instead. Doooh! Of course .bashrc has no effect on
emacs behaviour, I should think about .emacs instead right. Now with
(setenv "TEXDOCVIEW_dvi" "kdvi %s") added to .emacs C-c C-c is calling
texdoc which redirects it to kdvi!  Wola wola wola!


2) M-x *eshell* doesn't appear to read my .bashrc so the aliases and
environmental variables don't work in that shell. Well of course this
is the emacs shell and not a bash shell, but I cannot find online how
to set aliases for the eshell.


3) With M-x shell, say I forget the & I cannot use C-z followed by bg
to background the process as I could in M-x term. For a reader this
isn't a big issue, but for other applications it might be. So ...


3a) How do I get something like a terminal's C-z within *shell*?

3b) Is it possible to edit the alias I have in .bashrc such that the &
is added automatically - I tried a few things but nothing I came up
with worked.

cheers
Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2008 um 14:39 schrieb David:

> Of course .bashrc has no effect on
> emacs behaviour, I should think about .emacs instead right. Now with
> (setenv "TEXDOCVIEW_dvi" "kdvi %s") added to .emacs C-c C-c is calling
> texdoc which redirects it to kdvi!  Wola wola wola!

Or just put a copy of texdoc in ~/bin and set there the preferred  
viewers.

>
> 3) With M-x shell, say I forget the & I cannot use C-z followed by bg
> to background the process as I could in M-x term. For a reader this
> isn't a big issue, but for other applications it might be. So ...

C-q C-z bg RET

>
>
> 3a) How do I get something like a terminal's C-z within *shell*?

C-q C-z

>
>
> 3b) Is it possible to edit the alias I have in .bashrc such that the &
> is added automatically - I tried a few things but nothing I came up
> with worked.


I prefer tcsh ...

--
Greetings

   Pete

One cannot live by television, video games, top ten CDs, and dumb  
movies alone
				– Amiri Baraka, 1999

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

Wow, Peter you're fast!

> >3) With M-x shell, say I forget the & I cannot use C-z followed by bg
> >to background the process as I could in M-x term. For a reader this
> >isn't a big issue, but for other applications it might be. So ...
> 
> C-q C-z bg RET
> 
> >
> >
> >3a) How do I get something like a terminal's C-z within *shell*?
> 
> C-q C-z

C-q C-z doesn't work for me but C-c C-z does :0)

Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2008 um 15:09 schrieb David:

> C-q C-z doesn't work for me but C-c C-z does :0)

Both work for me ... and from C-q C-z I thought it would show an  
universal principle in GNU Emacs: with C-q you can even insert a C-q  
or C-g!

--
Greetings

   Pete

Claiming that the Macintosh is inferior to Windows because most  
people use Windows, is like saying that all other restaurants serve  
food that is inferior to McDonald's.

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Thierry Volpiatto]

David <dpleydel@univ-fcomte.fr> writes:

>> Again, think of using a customised texdoc as viewer not only for TeX  
>> documents, but also TXT, PS, PDF, DVI ??? *one* tool name instead of  
>> four. And once your taste changes, you won't need to customise AUCTeX  
>> again!
>
> OK, so finally I get it!! I have added these lines to my .bashrc
>
> ## Set defaults for texdoc
> export TEXDOCVIEW_html="mozilla %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_pdf="xpdf %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_ps="gv %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_dvi="kdvi %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacs %s"
>
> ## Create alias for texdoc. I wanted "view" as my alias name, but that
> ## alrady existed. So I thought about "vyew" instead. This made me
> ## think "vitual sheep". So the alias name is now "vs".
> alias vs='texdoc -v'
>
>
>
> Now at the shell prompt I can just type
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.dvi &
>
> or 
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.ps &
>
> or 
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.pdf &
>
> and the right program is chosen for the job. Pretty cool. There are a
> few points I still need to straighten out.
>
> 1) C-c C-c doesn't refer to texdoc. I'll have to find how to redirect
> it. No no no, I got it!!! I just need to edit the entries in "tex
> output view style" from the customise autex library (and hit the
> "state" button). Horrah! Ah now the funny thing is I changed one of
> the lines in the raised button customisation buffer to "%(o?)texdoc
> %dS %d ## %(o?)xdvi %dS %d" but the environmental variable
> TEXDOCVIEW_dvi as specified in .bashrc is not being used and a default
> xdvi has been used instead. Doooh! Of course .bashrc has no effect on
> emacs behaviour, I should think about .emacs instead right. Now with
> (setenv "TEXDOCVIEW_dvi" "kdvi %s") added to .emacs C-c C-c is calling
> texdoc which redirects it to kdvi!  Wola wola wola!
>
>
> 2) M-x *eshell* doesn't appear to read my .bashrc so the aliases and
> environmental variables don't work in that shell. Well of course this
> is the emacs shell and not a bash shell, but I cannot find online how
> to set aliases for the eshell.

To add an alias to eshell, you just have to set it in eshell like that:

alias ls 'ls -all'

to unset it:

alias ls

 
>
> 3) With M-x shell, say I forget the & I cannot use C-z followed by bg
> to background the process as I could in M-x term. For a reader this
> isn't a big issue, but for other applications it might be. So ...
>
>
> 3a) How do I get something like a terminal's C-z within *shell*?
>
> 3b) Is it possible to edit the alias I have in .bashrc such that the &
> is added automatically - I tried a few things but nothing I came up
> with worked.
>
> cheers
> Dave
>
>
>
>

-- 
A + Thierry
Pub key: http://pgp.mit.edu

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking of something more permanent
such as putting your lines in an initiation file, so far I haven't
managed to find how to configure the eshell such that an initiation
file is executed each time the shell is started up.

cheers
Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> > export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacs %s"

By the way, having this above line in .bashrc is a bit strange when
texdoc is called from inside emacs becasue the txt file is opened in a
new emacs and not the current emacs.

So I am thinking to do this you nead to be able to call emacs commands
from a shell command line. Is that possible? Perhaps something like
(based on my experience with R not emacs)

aShellPrompt$ EMACS CMD Find-File %s

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2008 um 15:50 schrieb David:

>>> export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacs %s"
>
> By the way, having this above line in .bashrc is a bit strange when
> texdoc is called from inside emacs becasue the txt file is opened in a
> new emacs and not the current emacs.

Use emacsclient! It needs that you first run server-start (can be  
part of ~/.emacs). Up-to-date emacsclient has many options. Be sure  
to check them (for example making it not wait for the server)! You  
know manual-entry?

--
Greetings

   Pete

The future will be much better tomorrow.
				– George W. Bush

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> Use emacsclient! It needs that you first run server-start (can be  
> part of ~/.emacs). Up-to-date emacsclient has many options. Be sure  
> to check them (for example making it not wait for the server)! You  
> know manual-entry?

Once again Peter that's great. My .emacs_bash now contains

## An initialisation file just for bash inside emacs. 
## See also ~/.bashrc

export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacsclient %s"

function vs                                                                    
{ 
texdoc -v $PWD/$1 &
}                                                                              
  

You guys (Pete and Thierry) helped me a lot today, really thanks a
lot!! It's nearly the weekend so I'm gonna give you guys a break now!!
Enjoy your weekend, and again, many thanks!

Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Thierry Volpiatto]

David <dpleydel@univ-fcomte.fr> writes:

>> Again, think of using a customised texdoc as viewer not only for TeX  
>> documents, but also TXT, PS, PDF, DVI ??? *one* tool name instead of  
>> four. And once your taste changes, you won't need to customise AUCTeX  
>> again!
>
> OK, so finally I get it!! I have added these lines to my .bashrc
>
> ## Set defaults for texdoc
> export TEXDOCVIEW_html="mozilla %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_pdf="xpdf %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_ps="gv %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_dvi="kdvi %s"
> export TEXDOCVIEW_txt="emacs %s"
>
> ## Create alias for texdoc. I wanted "view" as my alias name, but that
> ## alrady existed. So I thought about "vyew" instead. This made me
> ## think "vitual sheep". So the alias name is now "vs".
> alias vs='texdoc -v'
>
>
>
> Now at the shell prompt I can just type
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.dvi &
>
> or 
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.ps &
>
> or 
>
> funkyPrompt$ vs someFileName.pdf &
>
> and the right program is chosen for the job. Pretty cool. There are a
> few points I still need to straighten out.
>
> 1) C-c C-c doesn't refer to texdoc. I'll have to find how to redirect
> it. No no no, I got it!!! I just need to edit the entries in "tex
> output view style" from the customise autex library (and hit the
> "state" button). Horrah! Ah now the funny thing is I changed one of
> the lines in the raised button customisation buffer to "%(o?)texdoc
> %dS %d ## %(o?)xdvi %dS %d" but the environmental variable
> TEXDOCVIEW_dvi as specified in .bashrc is not being used and a default
> xdvi has been used instead. Doooh! Of course .bashrc has no effect on
> emacs behaviour, I should think about .emacs instead right. Now with
> (setenv "TEXDOCVIEW_dvi" "kdvi %s") added to .emacs C-c C-c is calling
> texdoc which redirects it to kdvi!  Wola wola wola!
>
>
> 2) M-x *eshell* doesn't appear to read my .bashrc so the aliases and
> environmental variables don't work in that shell. Well of course this
> is the emacs shell and not a bash shell, but I cannot find online how
> to set aliases for the eshell.
>
>
> 3) With M-x shell, say I forget the & I cannot use C-z followed by bg
> to background the process as I could in M-x term. For a reader this
> isn't a big issue, but for other applications it might be. So ...
>
>
> 3a) How do I get something like a terminal's C-z within *shell*?
>
> 3b) Is it possible to edit the alias I have in .bashrc such that the &
> is added automatically - I tried a few things but nothing I came up
> with worked.

Did you try, instead of creting an alias, writing a function in .bashrc:
Some thing like that (not tested, not sure it work)

function vs
{
texdoc -v $PWD/$1
}

> cheers
> Dave
>
>
>
>

-- 
A + Thierry
Pub key: http://pgp.mit.edu

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[David]

> function vs
> {
> texdoc -v $PWD/$1
> }

Yeah cool, just add the & to your function and it works great.

Thanks
Dave

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Thierry Volpiatto]

David <dpleydel@univ-fcomte.fr> writes:

>> function vs
>> {
>> texdoc -v $PWD/$1
>> }
>
> Yeah cool, just add the & to your function and it works great.
>
> Thanks
> Dave
>
Oups! yes i forget the & !!
-- 
A + Thierry
Pub key: http://pgp.mit.edu

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Ralf Angeli]

* Peter Dyballa (2008-02-07) writes:

> Again, think of using a customised texdoc as viewer not only for TeX  
> documents, but also TXT, PS, PDF, DVI – *one* tool name instead of  
> four. And once your taste changes, you won't need to customise AUCTeX  
> again!

This is a very bad idea since you will have to check if something
changed in texdoc every time the TeX distribution is updated unless you
don't mind missing new features and bug fixes or dealing with potential
incompatibilities.

In addition you lose the capability of passing the paper size to the
viewer.  So this is an exceptionally bad suggestion for the case at hand
where a DVI viewer is being dealt with.

It's not like there is no reason for all the options
`TeX-output-view-style'.

-- 
Ralf

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2008 um 21:18 schrieb Ralf Angeli:

> This is a very bad idea since you will have to check if something
> changed in texdoc every time the TeX distribution is updated unless  
> you
> don't mind missing new features and bug fixes or dealing with  
> potential
> incompatibilities.

This isn't such a big issue. TeX Live updates happen once in two  
years, before 2006 it was once per year. We're already in the middle  
of February and no TeX Live 2008 DVD has been announced yet. I had to  
update my texdoc copy in four years once (I have saved the elder  
version in ~/bin, last change: a few days before summer 2007 began).

>
> In addition you lose the capability of passing the paper size to the
> viewer.  So this is an exceptionally bad suggestion for the case at  
> hand
> where a DVI viewer is being dealt with.


The latter is true, and I did not emphasise enough that David should  
only change one xdvi entry with texdoc (it is so obvious to me), the  
one that uses his default paper size. This is my fault! Next time  
I'll try to do a better job.

This xdvi incapability can be a much smaller problem when TeX users  
would understand that they are using pdfTeX, and that the DVI output  
is necessary only in just a few cases with use of special packages,  
mostly related with PostScript graphics. When TeX users would allow  
pdfTeX to directly create PDF, then the PDF viewer would not need to  
be told the paper size or its direction, because this is recorded in  
the PDF file, and then a dozen of different xdvi calls would not be  
necessary.

Anyway, once the error of changing too much was done, the original  
setup can easily be re-established by just commenting the  
customisation. Now one is offered another chance to make just the  
necessary changes, and after saving this, one can look at both  
customisation expressions and try to find an optimum. And for this  
one can "expand" the one-liners to multi-liners to see which  
expression matches which case.

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

Increase the size of your bike by at least *five* inches!

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Ralf Angeli]

* Peter Dyballa (2008-02-09) writes:

> Am 08.02.2008 um 21:18 schrieb Ralf Angeli:
>
>> This is a very bad idea since you will have to check if something
>> changed in texdoc every time the TeX distribution is updated unless  
>> you
>> don't mind missing new features and bug fixes or dealing with  
>> potential
>> incompatibilities.
>
> This isn't such a big issue. TeX Live updates happen once in two  
> years, before 2006 it was once per year.

What you are suggesting is just plain unnecessary because there are
other ways of achieving the goal of abusing `texdoc' as a replacement
for `run-mailcap' (aka `see'), namely setting the environment variables
used by `texdoc' or adapting the mailcap configuration.  Please, inform
yourself before making suggestions.

>> In addition you lose the capability of passing the paper size to the
>> viewer.  So this is an exceptionally bad suggestion for the case at  
>> hand
>> where a DVI viewer is being dealt with.
>
> The latter is true, and I did not emphasise enough that David should  
> only change one xdvi entry with texdoc (it is so obvious to me), the  
> one that uses his default paper size.

And how would that help?  Then he still gets `xdvi' for the other cases.
Just do `M-x customize-variable <RET> TeX-output-view-style <RET>',
search for instances of "xdvi" and replace them with "kdvi", assuming
`kdvi' takes the same command line options as `xdvi'.  Big deal!

-- 
Ralf

Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Tassilo Horn]

David <dpleydel@univ-fcomte.fr> writes:

Hi David,

> As I'm sure manyof you know, when working with latex a few C-c C-c
> commands will compile the latex, bibtex and launch a dvi viewer. How
> can I change the default dvi viewer from xdvi to kdvi?

Do you use AUCTeX?  Then this will do the trick.  (Replace okular with
kdvi and kpdf.)

  ;; PDFs per default mit okular öffnen
  (add-to-list 'TeX-output-view-style
               '("^pdf$" "." "okular %o"))

  ;; DVIs per default mit okular öffnen
  (add-to-list 'TeX-output-view-style
               '("^dvi$" "." "okular %o"))

I added those two to TeX-mode-hook.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
Chuck Norris'  credit cards have no  limit. Last weekend,  he maxed them
out.