I habitually use vim to edit files, particularly latex code. Ashamedly I only recently realized you could make shell calls without leaving vim just by typing
:![command]When I’m editing a TeX file I am constantly typesetting my document to a pdf then opening the pdf. Here’s a one-line vi(m) specific bash command to typeset your current document to a pdf then open that pdf using your default pdf viewer.
:!if pdflatex "%"; then open "`echo "%" | sed "s/\(\.[^\.]*\)$/.pdf/g"`"; fi
If you do not have or want to use the open command just replace it with some other viewer like ghostview or xpdf.
Note: Here’s the multi-line version of the exact same thing if you want to save it in a callable bash script:
!/bin/bash
if pdflatex $1; then
open `echo $1 | sed "s/\(\.[^\.]*\)$/.pdf/g"`
fi
If you save the above in an executable file called openpdflatex then you could still call it from vi or vim with
:!openpdflatex %
Update: Occasionally I include .eps figures so I need to first make a .dvi with the latex command then use dvipdf to convert to pdf. Here’s how I do it in one line from vi(m):
:!if latex %; then if dvipdf `echo % | sed "s/\(\.[^\.]*\)$/.dvi/g"`; then open `echo % | sed "s/\(\.[^\.]*\)$/.pdf/g"`; fi; fi