Re: future versions - synctex

[Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu>]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018, Hans Hagen wrote:

> On 8/21/2018 3:04 PM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Aug 2018, Hans Hagen wrote:
>> 
>>>> Anyway, a better support for "pick-in-PDF-and-go-to-source" (synctex), 
>>>> namely when user "tunes" the docs to their final stage, would be great.
>>> I think that the current approach to hard code synctex libraries into a 
>>> viewer is a limitation (instead an editor should call an external program 
>>> with the page and coordinates so that an external program can then look at 
>>> the synctex file and decide where to go in the editor. That way more 
>>> sophisticated support is possible than the now hard coded heuristics. Keep 
>>> in mind that these heuristics are tuned for latex and from context we 
>>> generate the real minimal amount of synctex code that works without 
>>> clashing with these heuristics. If that were not that case is would be 
>>> unuseable.
>>> 
>>> Anyhow, there's only so much i can do about it (i'm not going to patch 
>>> viewers). Currently synctex is mostly working for decent structured source 
>>> (can be multiple files).
>> 
>> Which of the existing viewers have this functionality? Last time I tried 
>> using synctex on linux, almost all viewers gave an error that they could 
>> not parse synctex file.
>
> I think that is because the format of the synctex file changed.
>
>> Is there some documentation on what is the format of the synctex file 
>> written by ConTeXt and how the external program should be called with page 
>> and coordinates? With that we can try to raise an issue asking the pdf 
>> viewers to support that.
>
> context outputs a bare minimum of synctex info: basically it identifies text 
> and marks that, so we don't need the whole nested box mess that can confuse 
> the parser (think of boxes that lap or are moved or lie about dimensions)
>
> is you have a context synctex file you only see a few levels (basically words 
> / lines) marked
>
> There is a script:
>
> mtxrun --script synctex
>
> basically all an editor has to do is call:
>
> mtxrun --script synctex
>  --page=123 --x=400 --y=500
>  --editor=scite
>  foo.synctex

Are the x and y values in pts (post script points or big points?) 
measured from the top-left corner?

> the script will look into the synctex file and figure out where to go to. 
> Basically all the viewer needs to do is react to a click/cursor/key 
> combination and call mtxrun .... with the page and positions (basepoints in 
> pdf coordinate space)

How do I configure the editor command, e.g., with VIM, mtxrun will need to 
call:

`vim --servername=VIM --remote +{line_number} {filename}`

What should be the value of `editor` in this case?

Aditya
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