PDF shorthand

There are periods of time when I have to do a lot of article editing or book writing, and I usually do that in LaTeX. I find that writing dockets in LaTeX helps me focus on the content, maintain coherent style throughout the document, and produce better-looking results... and I lost my patience with office suites in general.

There is however, one thing that annoys me. Since I tend to just use a text editor (vim, or kate, or gedit) I usually need to go into terminal and type in the four commands to compile the document into a pdf:

pdflatex meh.tex && \
bibtex meh && \
pdflatex meh.tex && \
pdflatex meh.tex

And since I'm kinda compulsive I do that kind of often. And when it's not in the history of commands (because e.g., I'd been writing a script during a break in editing) I get annoyed.

So I figured I could do a simple script that would take care of those commands. A simple script that just takes the name of the tex file and returns a pdf. And I did just that.

And then I started fiddling with it and adding silly features: making it quiet, interactive, whatever; and then a getopt interface on top of it all. So it got kind of convoluted by the end. Feature-wise it probably lays smack in the middle between lightweight and feature-rich. I.e., it is slightly too complex but doesn't have the feature you want.

But I still like it.

If you're looking for fun stuff, the usage function is interesting, even if I say so myself. Instead of writing out a sequence of echo commands explaining what the program does, I decided to use the comments I write on the top of the scripts always. So the usage command finds and parses the script file, and then, using awk yanks the large comment, strips it of the hash character in front, and prints it out to the user. It saved time, and I should remember to sue it in the future in this context.

Some examples of usage now. First, make pdf from tex, bibliography and all:

pdfshorthand top.tex

To make it not produce all those pesky temporary documents (ask before removing each file or not):

pdfshorthand -c top.tex
pdfshorthand -cf top.tex

And if you have no bibliography in your docket, you need to use the b flag:

pdfshorthand -b top.tex
pdfshorthand -bc top.tex
pdfshorthand -bcf top.tex

The code:

 
  1 #!/bin/bash 
  2 # 
  3 # My shorthand for pdflatex 
  4 # 
  5 # Because I'm sick and tired of always putting in the same command over and  
  6 # over again just to compile a file into a PDF. This script does it for me. 
  7 # It's basically the equivalent for writing: 
  8 #   pdflatex top.tex && bibtex top && pdflatex top.tex && pdflatex top.tex and  
  9 # then cursing because I'd have much preferred it to halt on error but that is 
 10 # way too much writing. 
 11 # 
 12 # Usage: 
 13 #   shorthand [OPTION ...] FILE [FILE ...] 
 14 #    
 15 #   The FILE can but doesn't have to end with the extension 'tex'. If it isn't, 
 16 #   one will be added before passing the file to pdflatex; if it is, it will be 
 17 #   removed before passing the file to bibtex. 
 18 # 
 19 # Options: 
 20 #   -n|--no-colors    Do not use colors in output. Normally, colors are used  
 21 #                     for key messages: on success, on failure, and when  
 22 #                     compilation starts. 
 23 #    
 24 #   -b|--no-biblio    Do not attempt to generate a bibliography using bibtex. 
 25 # 
 26 #   -i|--interactive  Run pdflatex in interactive mode (halt on error). 
 27 #                     Otherwise the compilation is run in non-stop mode. 
 28 # 
 29 #   -q|--quiet        Do not show any output from the command whatsoever. 
 30 #                     Else, compilation produces a lot of output (be advised). 
 31 # 
 32 #   -c|--clean-up     Clean up after the compilation - remove aux, blg, bbl,  
 33 #                     and log files from the working directory. The files will 
 34 #                     be backed up in /tmp/ec.XXX/ just in case though, and  
 35 #                     you will be asked before the actual removal of each file 
 36 #                     takes place. 
 37 # 
 38 #   -f|--force        When used with -c or --clean-up, the script will not ask 
 39 #                     before removing each temporary file from the working  
 40 #                     directory. 
 41 # 
 42 #   -h|--help         Print usage information. 
 43 # 
 44 #   --latex-command   Specify a command to run instead of pdflatex. It will be 
 45 #                     given some arguments that pdflatex would have been given 
 46 #                     i.e., -interaction MODE and -non-stop-mode. 
 47 # 
 48 #   --bibtex-command  Specify a command to run instead of bibtex. 
 49 # 
 50 # Example: 
 51 #   shorthand top.tex 
 52 # 
 53 # Requires: 
 54 #   pdflatex 
 55 #   bibtex 
 56 # 
 57 # Author: 
 58 #   Konrad Siek <konrad.siek@gmail.com> 
 59 # 
 60 # License: 
 61 #   Copyright 2010 Konrad Siek 
 62 # 
 63 #   This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it  
 64 #   under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free  
 65 #   Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)  
 66 #   any later version. See  <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/> for details. 
 67 # 
 68  
 69 texcommand=pdflatex     # name or path to command 
 70 bibcommand=bibtex       # name or path to command 
 71 quiet=$false            # true or $false 
 72 interactive=$false      # true or $false 
 73 colors=true             # true or $false 
 74 cleanup=$false          # true or $false 
 75 force=$false            # true or $false 
 76 no_biblio=$false        # true or $false 
 77  
 78 # Print usage information. 
 79 usage () { 
 80     gawk '/^#/ && NR>1 {sub(/^#[ \t]?/,""); print; next} NR>1 {exit}' "$0" 
 81 } 
 82  
 83 # Print stuff to standard error. 
 84 stderr() { 
 85     echo $@ &> 2 
 86 } 
 87  
 88 # Parse options. 
 89 options=$(\ 
 90     getopt \ 
 91     -o ciqnhfb \ 
 92     --long clean-up,interactive,quiet,latex-command:,bibtex-command:,no-colors,force,help,no-biblio \ 
 93     -n $0 -- "$@" \ 
 94 ) 
 95  
 96 # Stop if there's some sort of problem. 
 97 if [ $? != 0 ] 
 98 then 
 99     [ $quiet ] && syserr "Argh! Parsing went pear-shaped!" 
100     exit 1 
101 fi 
102  
103 # Set the parsed command options and work with the settings. 
104 eval set -- "$options" 
105 while true  
106 do 
107     case "$1" in 
108     --latex-command) texcommand="$2"; shift 2;; 
109     --bibtex-command) bibcommand="$2"; shift 2;; 
110     -c|--clean-up) cleanup=true; shift;; 
111     -n|--no-colors) colors=$false; shift;; 
112     -f|--force) force=true; shift;; 
113     -i|--interactive) interactive=true; shift;; 
114     -q|--quiet) quiet=true; shift;; 
115     -h|--help) usage; exit 1;; 
116     -b|--no-biblio) no_biblio=true; shift;; 
117     --) shift; break;; 
118     *) syserr "Ack! She cannae take it anymore, captain!"; exit 3;; 
119     esac 
120 done 
121  
122 # Various messages printed out by the script. 
123 SUCCESS="Huzzah!" 
124 FAIL="Your shipment of fail has arrived." 
125 PROCESSING="Processing file <{}>" 
126  
127 # If no params given, print usage and quit with an error. 
128 [ $# -lt '1' ] && (usage; exit 1) 
129  
130 # Specify the params for pdflatex for whatever level of interactiveness the  
131 # user expects. We do this beforehand. 
132 if [ $interactive ] 
133 then 
134     iparams="-interaction errorstopmode -halt-on-error" 
135 else 
136     iparams="-interaction nonstopmode" 
137 fi 
138  
139 clean_up () { 
140     if [ $cleanup ] 
141     then 
142         dir=`mktemp --tmpdir -d "$1.XXX"` && \
143         for ext in bbl blg log aux out nav snm
144         do 
145             f="$1.$ext"; cp -v "$f" "$dir/$f" 
146             if [ -f "$f" ] 
147             then 
148                 [ $force ] && rm -vf "$f" || rm -vi "$f" 
149             else 
150                     "Omitting file: $f" 
151             fi 
152         done 
153         cp -v "$1.tex" "$dir/" 
154     fi 
155 } 
156  
157 # If the user wants colors, the messages can be prepared beforehand. 
158 if [ $colors ] 
159 then 
160     # Add coloring control characters to the message strings: 
161     # success, green; fail, red; processing, white; all bold. 
162     SUCCESS="\033[32m\033[1m$SUCCESS\033[m" 
163     FAIL="\033[31m\033[1m$FAIL\033[m" 
164     PROCESSING="\033[37m\033[1m$PROCESSING\033[m" 
165 fi 
166  
167 # If bibtex is not supposed to be run at all, run the 'true' command instead. 
168 # The 'true' command will take whatever parameters and do absolutely nothing, 
169 # then it'll report a success. So it fits perfectly with the other commands. 
170 if [ $no_biblio ] 
171 then 
172     bibcommand=true 
173 fi 
174  
175 # The shorthand method for the pdflatex/bibtex combination. 
176 shorthand () { 
177     # Cut off the extension, if any to create the bibtex argument, 
178     dir=`dirname "$1"` 
179     base=`basename "$1" .tex` 
180     stump="$dir/$base" 
181  
182     # And now stick the extension back on to create the pdflatex argument. 
183     full="$stump.tex" 
184  
185     # Print out what file is being processed. 
186     echo -e ${PROCESSING//\{\}/$full}  
187  
188     # The pipe, where all the magic happens: 
189     $texcommand $iparams "$full" && \
190     $bibcommand "$stump" && \
191     $texcommand $iparams "$full" && \
192     $texcommand $iparams "$full" && \
193     (clean_up "$base"; echo -e $SUCCESS) || echo -e $FAIL 
194  
195     # Finally print out an information whether the processing was a success or 
196     # a failure. 
197 } 
198  
199 # Do the thing. 
200 for arg
201 do 
202     # If quiet mode is on, send all results to the black hole. 
203     [ $quiet ] && shorthand "$arg" 1> /dev/null 2>/dev/null || shorthand "$arg" 
204 done 

The code is also available at GitHub as bash/pdfshorthand.