Re: [Skim-app-users] Auto-reload for remote files and synctex on OS X Server

[Christiaan H. <cmh...@gm...>]

On Apr 20, 2011, at 18:04, Ivo Geradts wrote:

> Dear Skimmers,
> 
> I am a very happy Skim user and I am impressed with the constant improvemments Skim undergoes. However, there are two issues that I ran into:
> 
> (1) I work in a setup where TeX files residing on a server running OS X Server (10.6.7) are previewed using Skim (1.3.13) on client machines running OS X (10.6.7). TeX is running on the server and TeX runs are initiated remotely by clients running the Terminal; the TeX files and resulting PDF files are located on remote home directories mounted via AFP. I let Skim check for file changes. The trouble is that the reload time after a TeX run varies from instantly to a few seconds, which can be annoying when performing a lot of TeX runs. The client machine seems to take a varying amount of time to notice a file refresh of the previewed pdf. I suspect that this problem is not caused by Skim, but rather by the AFP connection to the server, as on local volumes the file reload works flawlessly. As a work-around, it would be nice to have a 'Reload' button in Skim, to force a file reload manually. Additionally, it may be convenient to have an option 'Reload on activate' which causes a Skim window to reload the previewed file when the window is activated, whether the file has changed or not.
> 

On AFP volumes we cannot use filesystem notifications to get notified about this, so we just check the mod date every 2 sec. So it will be noted any time between immediate and 2 secs. There is a Revert menu action, but that may not always be active, because we first need to know whether there's something to revert, there's no way we can change that. Also reloading on activating is not an option, because that would lead to many unnecessary reloads. You should realize that reload feature is buggy by design, simply because it is impossible to do 100% correct, and we would rather not have it at all. The best way, and the only correct way, to reload the file is to have it done yourself using a script that combines the tex process and the revert.

> (2) Another thing is that PDF-TeX Sync support (using synctex), which is working great in OS X, is broken in OS X Server. Is there a way to debug the synctex behaviour in OS X Server? I would be glad if I could be of any help to fix this issue.
> 
> Best! Ivo.

Here we don't really use any file system stuff, except the file mod date. So I would not know why that should not be working. Are you putting the output files in a different directory, i.e. is your synctex file in a different directory from the pdf file? That is possible, but not supported.

Christiaan