HOWTO: Evince + SyncTeX + vim/emacs/scite/lyx/kile/$EDITOR + forward/backward search

[marciano]

Grrr! I got this to work beautifully on 12.04 with Sublime Text 2... but things have stopped working on 12.10 beta1 with today's updates ##@$@#)($*!!!

evince_forward_search now errors out upon calling "print_exc()", which means that the dbus interface or somehting like it must have changed yet again! Any wisdom to be offered?

Edit: scratch the above. The problem is that the scripts do not seem to support file names with spaces. I'll see if I can fix this. More info:

- The exception thrown is as follows:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/<OMITTED>/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages/LaTeXTools/evince/evince_forward_search", line 44, in <module>
    dbus_name = daemon.FindDocument('file://' + pdf_file, True, dbus_interface = "org.gnome.evince.Daemon")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 70, in __call__
    return self._proxy_method(*args, **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 145, in __call__
    **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)

- What fails is the call to FindDocument.
- Quoting the file name in the call to FindDocument does not work.

If anyone has any advice, it's very welcome!

[marciano]

OK, I solved my own problem

The evince_{forward,backward}_search scripts do not seem to handle file names with spaces. The problem is that the Evince FindDocument call expects an URI for the file name, with spaces replaced with "%20". If you pass a file name with non-encoded spaces, the call throws an exception. On the other hand, SyncTeX handles file names with spaces just fine, but a consequence of this is that if you replace spaces with "%20" in the name of the TeX file, syncing will fail (most likely, your editor will open a new window or tab with a new file name).

To fix this, you need the following changes:

1. in evince_forward_search, replace the line that says

pdf_file = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])

with

pdf_file = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1]).replace(" ", "%20")

2. in evince_backward_search, method __init__(), replace the line

self.uri = uri

with

self.uri = uri.replace(" ", "%20")

also, add the following line at the beginning of method on_sync_source():

input_file = input_file.replace("%20", " ")

3. finally, in the evince shell script, make sure that you invoke your editor quoting the file name.

Hope this helps!
Marciano.

[mjacek]

In my installation emacs tried to treat uri of the file literally - it visited a file with name /home/mjacek/file:/home/mjacek/latex/mypaper.tex, which was nonexistent...


After trying strange things, I hacked the evince_backward_search script with a line to strip the "file:" uri prefix:


cmd = re.sub("%l",str(source_link[0]), cmd)
##mjacek added next line
cmd = re.sub("file:","",cmd)
##
print cmd

... and now it works OK

I also needed to use patches from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...26&postcount=5 , otherwise I got dbus error.

PS. When editing Python code do remember that indentation counts - align the new line exactly with old ones, not the other way round

[deven2u]

Hello Ben and all the other guys who contributed,

Great work! I am in the proof reading stage of my thesis (and can't use dvi format because of tikz and pgfplots). This app has till date, at least saved me 50% of the efforts.

Cheers,
Devendra

[macsa]

Hello all,

I got that working for vim on Ubuntu 12.10. The only problem is that if I do ctrl-click in evince to jump to vim, vim starts two windows. One is working and I can jump through the document via forward and backward search. The second window is just a replica of the first one with the same document and I have to manuelly close that one. Can you help me? Maybe there is a newer version of the script for ubuntu 12.10.

Thank you!

[quasus]

Hello all,

I got that working for vim on Ubuntu 12.10. The only problem is that if I do ctrl-click in evince to jump to vim, vim starts two windows. One is working and I can jump through the document via forward and backward search. The second window is just a replica of the first one with the same document and I have to manuelly close that one. Can you help me? Maybe there is a newer version of the script for ubuntu 12.10.

Thank you!

I've had a similar problem: as I have a .tex file open in gvim, evince opens another instance of the same file in a tab prefixed with 'file://' (I use '-remote-tab-silent'). I've changed
cmd = re.sub("%f",input_file[7:],self.editor)
to
cmd = re.sub("%f",input_file[7:],self.editor)
in evince_backward_search (thus stripping unwanted prefix), and now it works.

Many thanks to the author and contributors! The scripts are great.

[rehanog]

Thanks a lot for a great tool.

How about putting it on github?

Rehan

[a.fiodorov]

woth pointing out that the right path for those who use vundle (instead of vim-latexsuite package) is
~/.vim/bundle/vim-latex/after/ftplugin/tex.vim

[whophil]

Bringing this back from the dead -- seems like this issue also affects filenames/paths that have other special characters in them. For example, forward and backward search don't work for files that have "[" or "]" characters in them on my Ubuntu system.

It seems like some additional escaping might be needed for other special characters.

[gonghan]

Has anyone tried this on 14.04? I did not succeed. Any ideas please?


I have sorted the issue. In 14.04, the dbus interface has been changed. The solution is found at #5.