LaTeX Setup

My Linux setup for running a multi-file (or not) LaTeX project. When any .tex file is saved, the whole document is compiled and displayed quickly.

Requirements

Latex distribution

I'm using TeX Live - you can install versions containing different LaTeX packages: texlive-latex-extra, texlive-full, etc.

What I used:

sudo apt install texlive-latex-extra texlive-science

Atom

Atom is used to edit the project's .tex files.

Atom packages required:

language-latex for syntax-highlights
autocomplete-latex for autocompletion
save-commands-plus to compile the PDF when files are saved

MuPDF

MuPDF is used to display the PDF document. It's a bit unusual, but very fast at reloading the PDF.

MuPDF main repo: git://git.ghostscript.com/mupdf.git

My fork which adds mouse4 and mouse5 for previous/next page, scroll to bottom on prev page, top on next page: https://github.com/joaomacp/mupdf.git

Installing MuPDF (my fork)

sudo apt install mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxi-dev
git clone --recursive https://github.com/joaomacp/mupdf.git
cd mupdf
sudo make prefix=/usr/local install

Setup

Clone or download this repo to ~/latex-setup.

.bashrc

In ~/.bashrc, add the root directory of your LaTeX project:

export THESIS_PATH=~/path/to/"your thesis"

Note: It's assumed a main.tex file exists in the root directory, as the document to be compiled.

Atom save-commands file

Copy the save-commands.json file to the same root directory.
Edit the path /home/nimbus/latex-setup/compile_and_show_pdf.sh to the full path in your machine.

Running

bash ~/latex-setup/launch_thesis.sh launches Atom and MuPDF to start editing and viewing
Every time a .tex file is saved (either in root or in subdirectories), the PDF is updated

Optional

In ~/.bashrc, add an alias (e.g. alias lt='bash ~/latex-setup/launch_thesis.sh') to launch the setup quickly

Tips:

Keep the project backed up by syncing the project directory in Dropbox
Use Overleaf to sync to the same Dropbox dir, making the project available there
Make Mendeley sync to the project's .bib file

Additional Atom packages:

spell-check comes with Atom. To work with latex, go to settings and add text.tex.latex to "Grammars" and .support.function.tex to "Excluded Scopes". Also nice to enable "Add Known Words"
latexer for \cite and \ref completion (see "Multifile support")
The theme I use: duotone-light-syntax

joaomacp/latex-setup