[texhax] Instant preview - was Re: LaTeX enhancement

[Tom Schneider]

Folks:

I use a simple csh and perl script system to do 'instant preview':

http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/atchange.html

>From the page:

When the atchange program is running, it watches one or more files.
When any of those files changes, the atchange program will wake up and
do any actions you want. Tasks such as modifying and compiling a
program, modifying a data file and using it, or editing a text and
typesetting it can be automated with a single typed command such as:

atchange myprogram "compile myprogram"

Down the page is information about how to set this up for LaTeX:

LaTeX with Atchange: A Typesetting WYSIWYG!

Advantages:

1.  It will work on any unix system with perl installed.

2.  It is very simple.

3.  The code is a simple set of tools, so easily modified.

The method is to have an atchange watching the LaTeX source file
(.tex).  When one writes the file out (I programmed vi/vim to take a
',' to do this - one keystroke, no mousing!) the atchange
automatically runs LaTeX and BiBTeX, and pops up errors in a window. 
When done, it triggers the redisplay of the current page in xdvi using
xrefresh.  (So there is some mousing to switch pages in xdvi but
otherwise it is just one keystroke to get the new display.)

Notice that you can use atchange for a zillion other tasks - it gives
you 'on the fly automation'!

Tom

  Dr. Thomas D. Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  toms at ncifcrf.gov
  permanent email: toms at alum.mit.edu (use only if first address fails)
  http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/