from the Shell

Calling the server differs from calling virtex directly in that you do not have all the options available that you have otherwise:

  1. You cannot pass options like -c, -d, ...to virtex.

  2. You must specify an existing filename. You cannot say "Start_TeX testpage" even though you now that testpage.tex is somewhere in your (LaTeX) include path. Start_TeX is looking for testpage in your current directory and will report an error if it cannot find it there.

  3. You can, however, say Start_TeX TeX:macros/latex/testpage, as before.

  4. You are not obliged to put a & in front of the format name. This is mostly usefull for many shells!

  5. The server is called asynchronously, your CLI is again free for use, even if TeX has not finished compiling your file yet!

The general syntax is:

[rx] Start_TeX [ < formatname >] < filename >

The same options relative to the format name are available than for ShowDVI: supply no format name, a format name or '?' as a format name. It works exactly the same.

The Start_TeX macro is not fully asynchronous, if you queue several request while the server is busy, you'll have to wait till your request is accepted. Don't queue several requests!