[XeTeX] What is synctex?

[Jonathan Kew]

On 13 May 2008, at 9:47 am, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Having built xetex from source on May 5 on the Mac
>
>> theo9mc182:~ bvoisin$ xetex --version
>> XeTeX 3.1415926-2.2-0.998.1 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>> kpathsea version 3.5.6dev
>> Copyright 2008 SIL International.
>> Kpathsea is copyright 2008 Karl Berry and Olaf Weber.
>> There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
>> covered by the terms of both the XeTeX copyright and
>> the Lesser GNU General Public License.
>> For more information about these matters, see the file
>> named COPYING and the XeTeX source.
>> Primary author of XeTeX: Jonathan Kew.
>> Kpathsea written by Karl Berry, Olaf Weber, and others.
>>
>> Compiled with ICU version 3.8.1 [with modifications for XeTeX]
>> Compiled with zlib version 1.2.3; using 1.2.3
>> Compiled with FreeType2 version 2.3.5; using 2.3.5
>> Using Mac OS X Carbon, Cocoa & QuickTime frameworks
>
> I just noticed that when using xelatex to typeset a .tex input file, a
> new file .synctex.gz is created in addition to the usual .log and .aux
> files.
>
> Looking at the xetex source repository, one can indeed find a
> directory http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xetex/TRUNK/texk/web2c/ 
> synctex/
>   and there a man page containing
>
>> The Synchronization TeXnology is a new feature of recent TeX
>> engines. It allows to synchronize between input and output, which
>> means to navigate from the source document to the typeset material
>> and vice versa.
> and later
>
>> The Synchronize TeXnology is essentially due to Jerome Laurens, with
>> useful suggestions by some well known actors of the TeX world.
>
>
> However, the man page also says
>
>> Run `synctex help' to access the built-in tool documentation.
> which doesn't seem to work
>
>> theo9mc182:~ bvoisin$ synctex help
>> -bash: synctex: command not found
>
> Neither does "man synctex"
>
>> theo9mc182:~ bvoisin$ man synctex
>> Cannot open the message catalog "man" for locale "fr_FR.UTF-8"
>> (NLSPATH="<none>")
>>
>> No manual entry for synctex
>
> Is this all normal? Where can we find information on synctex? And how
> to disactivate it if required?

SyncTeX is a not-quite-released-yet feature, so you're seeing "work  
in progress". (I mentioned it briefly in my presentations at BachoTeX  
recently, but I believe Jerome is intending to give a proper  
presentation at TUG2008 in Cork.)

I'm a bit surprised that you're getting a synctex file by default;  
that's probably an error in the xetex version you have (I notice that  
your version number is already out-of-date!). You could try - 
synctex=0 on the command line, and/or \synctex=0 in your source, to  
see if either of these will suppress it; alternatively, update again  
to the newest code, as this area is still changing. You're only  
supposed to get that file if you specifically enable the feature.

The intention is to have SyncTeX support in the TeX Live 2008 release  
(of xetex and pdftex), but it will really become useful as front-end  
programs are updated to work with it. Expect to see further  
developments in this area over the coming months....

JK