SyncTeX and SumatraPDF

The author of the pdfsync TeX package, J�r�me Laurens, has developed a new technology called SyncTex that will eventually replace pdfsync. SyncTex is directly integrated in pdftex. This has many benefits: there is no need to load a special package in your .tex document, there is no more incompatibilities with latex packages, and the synchronization is more precise. One disadvantage is that the generated synchronization file can be huge, and for that reason it has an option to zip it.

Installing SyncTex

SyncTex is not yet released in current TeX distributions (TeXLive 2007), but you can install it by following these steps: 1- install the TexLive distribution

2- replace the following three files:

1: 
2: 
3:

C:\TeXLive2007\bin\win32\pdftex.exe
C:\TeXLive2007\bin\win32\pdftex.dll
C:\TeXLive2007\bin\win32\kpathsea356.dll

by pdftex.dll, pdftex.exe, and kpathsea356.dll.

3- Regenerate the format files using the setup program from the TexLive CD

Using SyncTex

Now to generate .synctex files you just need to specify the --synctex command-line argument to pdftex as follows:

1:	`pdflatex --synctex=-1 test.tex`

Synchronizing with SumatraPDF

The author has provided a reference parser implementation for synchronization files generated by SyncTex. I have integrated it in SumatraPDF. If people are interested to test it, a binary version is available here.

I plan to commit my changes to the Sumatra code base in the coming days if I see that it works well with me.

Published: 06/12/2008 02:00:12
Author: William Blum
Typos: Send me a pull request!
Tags: Windows, SyncTex, SumatraPDF, LaTex