Re: suggestion to change default org-latex-pdf-process to latexmk

[Stefan Nobis]

"Bruce D'Arcus" <bdarcus@gmail.com> writes:

> Here's the current command for the "latexmk" option:

> "latexmk -g -pdf -pdflatex=\"%latex\" -outdir=%o %f"

> ... and here's what you have, minus shell-escape.

> "latexmk -f -pdf -%latex -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory=%o %f"

The option "-interaction=nonstopmode" forbids user interaction (like
asking for a missing file). Without this explicit option latexmk uses
"-interaction=batchmode" by default - in this case some diagnotic
messages to the terminal (not log file) are suppressed. Thus the
default option from latexmk might suffice.

Regarding "-f" versus "-g" I personally would slightly prefer "-f" for
performance reasons. With "-g" the document will always be newly
generated, even if nothing changed. This is only useful if the latexmk
config (or some environment variable) has changed. Other changes
should be detectable by latexmk, so "-f" should suffice.

The options "-output-directory" and "-outdir" are synonyms.

Regarding the choise of engine: "-pdflatex=\"%latex\"" explicitly sets
the command (including options) to be called by latexmk, without
letting latexmk know that the engine changed. Using "-%latex" (e.g.
the option "-lualatex" or "-xelatex") lets latexmk know that a
different engine should be used.

This matters at least for xelatex, because latexmk can utilize some
optimizations if it knows that xetex is used. In this case the first
runs only produce .xdv files and only the last run will produce the
full pdf to save time (see also option "-pdfxe" which is triggered by
"-xelatex").

Therefore I would tend to use this call:

    "latexmk -f -pdf -%latex -outdir=%o %f"

All other aspects of latexmk should be configured via config file
(IMHO).

> In any case, whatever the command is, clearly it should.

Yes, I would also recommend latexmk (it may also speed up PDF
generation, because in quite some cases a single or two passes suffice
and latexmk is quite good in detecting these cases).

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.