A small tool to visualize TikZ changes in WISIWYG manner and make working with it nicer. Similar to kTikZ, but much lighter and does not force the choice of editor.
Editing TikZ diagrams with update-save-compile-re-open cycle can be extremely tedious.
TiKzviewer aims to simplify this by launching inotifywait loop on the selected file,
which launched the latex compiler on change.
Run make install from the tikzviewer directory.
TiKzviewer assumes that ~/bin directory is executable, and copies itself there.
Furthermore, the template containing the include commands for the tikz package
is copied to the ~/.config/tikzviewer folder.
- inotify-tools
- TikZ
- PDF viewer, smart enough to reload the file on change (Evince and Okular are both suitable)
- Your Favorite Editor
Write your favorite diagram in the mydiagram.tex file.
There is no need for the preamble; the file can just start with the begin{tikzpicture} statement.
While keeping the editor open, run tikzviewer.sh mydiagram.tex command.
You should see a message indicating a successful compilation and a blocking prompt.
That is it! TikZviewer was launched.
Now open the file mydiagram.pdf in your favourite PDF viewer and observe the changes.
On each write to the mydiagram.tex file, the PDF would be recompiled, and the image in PDF viewer will be updated.
To change a template, manually modify ~/.config/tikzviewer/preview_template.tex.