Quickstart¶
Why SpiX?¶
With SpiX, the compilation process of a .tex
file (Is it compiled using latex? pdflatex? xelatex? lualatex? Should I process its bibliography? with bibtex or biber? Is there an index?) is written in the .tex
file itself, in a human-readable format (a shell script). That way [1]:
when you want to compile two years later, you don’t have to guess the compilation process;
you can send the
.tex
file to someone, and that’s it: no need to send detailed instructions or a Makefile along with it (everything is in the.tex
file);the compilation process is human readable: it can be understood by anyone who is able to read a very basic shell script. In particular, one can read it even if she does not know SpiX.
The .tex
file¶
Write the compilation process of your .tex
file as a shell script, before the preamble, as lines starting with %$
:
% Compile this file twice with lualatex.
%$ lualatex foo.tex
%$ lualatex foo.tex
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, world!
\end{document}
You can also replace the file name with $texname
(and $basename
, without the extension).
That way, you don’t have to worry about the file name when writing your commands.
% Compile this file twice with lualatex.
%$ lualatex $texname
%$ lualatex $texname
Compilation¶
To compile the .tex
file, run SpiX:
spix foo.tex
Spix will parse the .tex
file, looking for shell snippets (lines before the preamble starting with %$
), and run them.
That’s all!
Footnotes