https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/
[1]jdhao's digital space

A Complete Guide on Writing LaTeX with Vimtex in Neovim

Previously, I have written [31]a post on how to write and
compile LaTeX source code in Sublime Text. Now that I am
familiar with Neovim, I want to do everything related to
text editing inside Neovim. In this post, I would like
to share how to configure Neovim for LaTeX editing and
previewing.

My complete config for vimtex can be found [32]here
(search vimtex) on my nvim-config repo .

Pre-requisite

Before we begin, you should make sure that you have
installed the following software and plugins.

  • TeX Distribution: [33]TeX Live is preferred since
  it is bundled with
    the possible many tools you will ever need for writing
    LaTeX.
  • Auto-complete plugin: Since I use Neovim, so I
  recommend using [34]
    deoplete.
  • Snippet Engine and snippet plugin: I recommend
  [35]Ultisnips along
    with the many snippets provided by plugin
    [36]vim-snippets.

Then we need to install the LaTeX plugin for
Neovim. [37]Vimtex is a great choice. To install it,
we can use [38]vim-plug:

Plug 'lervag/vimtex'

Faster LaTeX source file editing

Auto-completion

In writing LaTeX source code, auto-completion is
crucial for fast editing and improves our efficiency
dramatically. Vimtex supports completion for citations,
labels (for figure, equation, table, section, etc.),
commands, environments, packages and document classes
and more. For more documentation on completion, see :h
vimtex-completion.

Vimtex can work with several completion engines such as
[39]deoplete, [40] YouCompleteMe, [41]ncm2. Since I use
deoplete for completion, I will just introduce how to
configure it for deoplete^[42]1. To make vimtex work with
deoplete, add the following setting to your init.vim:

" This is new style call deoplete#custom#var('omni',
'input_patterns', {
      \ 'tex': g:vimtex#re#deoplete \})

After that, you should be able to use auto-completion.

How to quickly insert an environment?

Vimtex supports autocompletion through autocompletion
engines such as deoplete. After configuring vimtex to use
deoplete, you should be able to use the snippet provided
by Ultisnips^[43]2.

Ultisnips is a snippet engine, which uses [44]vim-snippets
to provide the actual snippet for various file types. To
insert an figure environment, type fig in insert mode and
press Tab.

To insert an enumerate environment, type enum in insert
mode and press Tab. The complete list of snippets provided
by vim-snippets can be found [45]here.

How to close an environment?

After typing \begin{ENV}, how do we automatically close it
with \end{ENV}?  With vimtex, you can press ]] in insert
mode to auto-close an environment.

Useful mappings and shortcuts

Vimtex provides the e text object to facilitate
[46]vim-surround like features for manipulating an
environment quickly:

  • cse: change an environment • dse: delete an
  environment • tse：toggle stared environment and
  no-star environment, e.g., change
    from equation* to equation and vice versa.

You can also use the standard Vim motion with this
object. For example, vie will select the inside an
environment, and vae will select the entire environment
(including the begin and end commands).

There are other shortcuts provided:

  • ]]: close an environment (only work in insert mode,
  in normal mode, it
    will bring cursor to next subsection instead). After
    you have typed begin{ENV}, use ]] to auto-close it
    with \end{ENV}

For more mappings, see :h vimtex-default-mappings.

Jumping between references and the definition

It would be nice if we can jump to the definition of a
label with the native Vim shortcut [47]Ctrl-]. You have
to do several things.

First, you need to install a ctags executable. See [48]here
on how to install ctags.

Second, you need to install a plugin to manage tags file
for you. [49] vim-gutentags is a good option. It will
update the tags file automatically once the source file
has been changed. To make gutentags work, you need to
tell it where your project root is. The easiest way is to
[50]make your project a git repository.

Open the TeX source file again, the tags file
should be created automatically. If the cursor is
in \ref{some_label}, you can press Ctrl + ] to go the
position where some_label is defined. BTW, to jump back,
you can use Ctrl-T.

Useful command

  • :VimtexInfo: show all relevant info about current
  LaTeX project.  • :VimtexTocOpen: show table of
  contents window • :VimtexTocToggle: toggle table of
  contents window • :VimtexCompile: Compile the current
  LaTeX source file and opens the
    viewer after successful compilation.
  • :VimtexStop: Stop compilation for the current
  project.  • :VimtexClean: clean auxiliary files
  generated in compliation process.

Other settings

PDF previewing

Vimtex supports several PDF viewer based on the
platform. On Windows, [51] SumatraPDF is a good
choice. Below is the settings needed for SumatraPDF to
work as the default viewer for the compiled PDF files.

" settings for sumatraPDF let g:vimtex_view_general_viewer
= 'SumatraPDF' let g:vimtex_view_general_options
    \ = '-reuse-instance -forward-search @tex @line @pdf'
let g:vimtex_view_general_options_latexmk =
'-reuse-instance'

After the above settings, if you use :VimtexCompile
command, the compiled PDF will be opened in sumatraPDF
automatically. If it does not show up, you can also use
:VimtexView to open the PDF manually.

On Mac, you can install [52]Skim and use it as a PDF
viewer. My current settings for previewing PDF on Mac is:

Click to see the code.

" let g:vimtex_view_method = "skim"
let g:vimtex_view_general_viewer =
'/Applications/Skim.app/Contents/SharedSupport/displayline'
let g:vimtex_view_general_options = '-r @line @pdf @tex'

augroup vimtex_mac
    autocmd!  autocmd User VimtexEventCompileSuccess
    call UpdateSkim()
augroup END

function! UpdateSkim() abort
    let l:out = b:vimtex.out() let
    l:src_file_path = expand('%:p') let l:cmd =
    [g:vimtex_view_general_viewer, '-r']

    if !empty(system('pgrep Skim')) call extend(l:cmd,
    ['-g']) endif

    call jobstart(l:cmd + [line('.'), l:out,
    l:src_file_path])
endfunction

Inverse search

Note the below settings are not updated anymore, see
[53]this post for a better and up-to-date config without
much manual labor.

First, we need to install [54]neovim-remote:

pip install -U neovim-remote

Second, we start nvim with a listen address so that nvim
can listen for RPC calls.

nvim --listen localhost:12345 test.tex

The port number does not matter as long as it is not taken
by other applications. If you use nvim-qt, you can use
the following command instead:

nvim-qt -- --listen localhost:12345 test.tex

Now the settings will differ for the PDF viewer you use
on different platforms.

Inverse search for Sumatra PDF on Windows

Open Sumatra PDF, go to Settings --> Options, in the bottom
part, there is a section Set inverse search command-line,
put the following command there:

nvr --servername localhost:12345 +"%l" "%f"

  • %f: it means the tex source file path corresponding
  to the current
    pdf.
  • %l: it means the line in the original tex file.

Double click somewhere in the PDF file, your cursor in
nvim/nvim-qt should go to the corresponding line in the
file buffer.

Inverse search for Skim on macOS

Open Skim PDF viewer, open the Preferences menu and go
to Sync page. Set the part PDF-Tex Sync support, use the
following settings:

  • Preset: Custom • Command: nvr • Arguments:
  --servername localhost:12345 +"%line" "%file"

Based on [55]discussion here, we can also start nvim
without the --listen option (nvim test.tex). When we open
a tex file in nvim, we can write the nvim server address
to a file and read it when running the nvr command in Skim.

Inside the Nvim config, add the following setting:

augroup vimtex_mac
  autocmd!  autocmd FileType tex call SetServerName()
augroup END

function! SetServerName()
  call system('echo ' . v:servername . ' >
  /tmp/curvimserver')
endfunction

For skim, we change the Arguments in Sync page to the
following:

  • Arguments: --servername `cat /tmp/curvimserver`
  +"%line" "%file"

To start inverse search, press Shift and Command key,
then click the text you want to inv-search.

Linting and syntax checking

I use [56]neomake for syntax checking. For LaTeX source
file, neomake provides [57]several makers:

  • [58]lacheck • [59]chktex • [60]Proselint

Among the makers, lacheck and chktex are installed if
you have installed Tex Live. Proselint can be installed
via pip:

pip install proselint

Setting up table of contents

Vimtex can show a nice little table of contents window
on the left side if you use command VimtexTocOpen. By
default, the lables in each section is also shown, which
makes the TOC clutter with texts. We can customize TOC
with following settings:

" TOC settings let g:vimtex_toc_config = {
      \ 'name' : 'TOC', \ 'layers' : ['content', 'todo',
      'include'], \ 'resize' : 1, \ 'split_width' :
      50, \ 'todo_sorted' : 0, \ 'show_help' : 1, \
      'show_numbers' : 1, \ 'mode' : 2, \}

For detailed meaning of the keys in the above dictionary,
refer to :h g:vimtex_toc_config.

TeX directives

If you are compiling a LaTeX source file written in
non-English character, you may want to use the TeX
directive to specify the compiling program.  Vimtex
supports two TeX directives: TeX root and TeX program. TeX
program directive is useful when we want to compile the
LaTeX source code with xelatex instead of pdflatex. In
order to compile your LaTeX source file with xelatex,
add the following directive to the first line of the
source code:

%!TeX program = xelatex

References

  • [61]https://yufanlu.net/2018/09/03/neovim-latex/
  • [62]vimtex: Create environment with shortcut •
  [63]Auto-close environment in LaTeX • [64]Setting up
  PDF viewer for Mac.  • Set up inverse search
      □ [65]https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/
        Use-Sumatra-as-a-pre-viewer-for-LaTeX-editors.html
      □ [66]https://forum.sumatrapdfreader.org/t/
        can-not-use-the-inverse-search-with-sumatrapdf-and-sublime/1786
      □
      [67]https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/460971/114857 □
      [68]https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote/issues/132
      □ [69]https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/262
      □ [70]https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/877
      □ [71]https://chiyosuke.blogspot.com/2019/04/
        neovimvimtextexlive2018tex.html
      □ [72]How do I jump from line in Skim to the same
      line in my text
        editor?
  • Go to label
      □ [73]https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/348
      □ [74]https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/853
  • [75]TeX directives provided by different programs.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

 1. For configuring vimtex to work with other completion
 engines, please
    refer to :h vimtex-complete-auto. [76]↩︎

 2. See [77]this post on how to configure Ultisnips for
 Neovim. [78]↩︎

Author jdhao

LastMod 2022-08-21

License [79]CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

[80]LaTeX [81]PDF [82]text-object [83]plugin [84] Nifty
Little Nvim Techniques to Make My Life Easier -- Series 1
Prev [85]Manipulating Images with Alpha Channels in Pillow
Next Please enable JavaScript to view the [86]comments
powered by utterances.  [87] [88] [89] [90] Powered by
[91]Hugo | Theme - [92]Even site pv: spinner.svg | site uv:
spinner.svg © 2017 - 2023jdhao

References:

[1] https://jdhao.github.io/ [2] https://jdhao.github.io/
[3] https://jdhao.github.io/post/ [4]
https://jdhao.github.io/categories/
[5] https://jdhao.github.io/tags/
[6] https://jdhao.github.io/about/ [7]
https://jdhao.github.io/ [8] https://jdhao.github.io/
[9] https://jdhao.github.io/post/ [10]
https://jdhao.github.io/categories/
[11] https://jdhao.github.io/tags/
[12] https://jdhao.github.io/about/ [13]
https://jdhao.github.io/categories/Nvim/ [14]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#pre-requisite
[15]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#faster-latex-source-file-editing
[16]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#auto-completion
[17]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#how-to-quickly-insert-an-environment
[18]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#how-to-close-an-environment
[19]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#useful-mappings-and-shortcuts
[20]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#jumping-between-references-and-the-definition
[21]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#useful-command
[22]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#other-settings
[23]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#pdf-previewing
[24]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#inverse-search
[25]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#inverse-search-for-sumatra-pdf-on-windows
[26]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#inverse-search-for-skim-on-macos
[27]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#linting-and-syntax-checking
[28]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#setting-up-table-of-contents
[29]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#tex-directives
[30]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#references
[31]
https://jdhao.github.io/2018/03/10/sublime-text-latextools-setup/
[32]
https://github.com/jdhao/nvim-config/blob/master/core/plugins.vim
[33] https://www.tug.org/texlive/ [34]
https://github.com/Shougo/deoplete.nvim
[35] https://github.com/SirVer/ultisnips
[36] https://github.com/honza/vim-snippets
[37] https://github.com/lervag/vimtex [38]
https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug [39]
https://github.com/Shougo/deoplete.nvim [40]
https://github.com/Valloric/YouCompleteMe
[41] https://github.com/ncm2/ncm2 [42]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#fn:1
[43]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#fn:2
[44] https://github.com/honza/vim-snippets [45]
https://github.com/honza/vim-snippets/blob/master/UltiSnips/tex.snippets
[46] https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround [47]
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/tagsrch.html#CTRL-%5D
[48]
https://github.com/jdhao/nvim-config/blob/master/README.md#ctags
[49] https://github.com/ludovicchabant/vim-gutentags [50]
https://kbroman.org/github_tutorial/pages/init.html [51]
https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html
[52] https://sourceforge.net/projects/skim-app/ [53]
https://jdhao.github.io/2021/02/20/inverse_search_setup_neovim_vimtex/
[54] https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote [55]
https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/1576#issuecomment-586754119
[56] https://github.com/neomake/neomake [57]
https://github.com/neomake/neomake/wiki/Makers
[58] https://ctan.org/pkg/lacheck?lang=en
[59] https://ctan.org/pkg/chktex?lang=en [60]
https://github.com/amperser/proselint [61]
https://yufanlu.net/2018/09/03/neovim-latex/ [62]
https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/1036 [63]
https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/266242/114857 [64]
https://gist.github.com/skulumani/7ea00478c63193a832a6d3f2e661a536
[65]
https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Use-Sumatra-as-a-pre-viewer-for-LaTeX-editors.html
[66]
https://forum.sumatrapdfreader.org/t/can-not-use-the-inverse-search-with-sumatrapdf-and-sublime/1786
[67] https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/460971/114857
[68] https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote/issues/132
[69] https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/262
[70] https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/877 [71]
https://chiyosuke.blogspot.com/2019/04/neovimvimtextexlive2018tex.html
[72] https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/129335/114857
[73] https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/348
[74] https://github.com/lervag/vimtex/issues/853
[75] https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/78101/114857 [76]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#fnref:1
[77]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/04/17/neovim_snippet_s1/ [78]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/26/nvim_latex_write_preview/#fnref:2
[79] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
[80] https://jdhao.github.io/tags/LaTeX/
[81] https://jdhao.github.io/tags/PDF/ [82]
https://jdhao.github.io/tags/text-object/
[83] https://jdhao.github.io/tags/plugin/ [84]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/28/nifty_nvim_techniques_s1/
[85]
https://jdhao.github.io/2019/03/07/pillow_image_alpha_channel/
[86] https://github.com/utterance
[87] mailto:jdhao@hotmail.com [88]
https://stackoverflow.com/users/6064933/jdhao?tab=profile
[89] https://github.com/jdhao [90]
https://jdhao.github.io/index.xml [91] https://gohugo.io/
[92] https://github.com/olOwOlo/hugo-theme-even