Sublime text build system - how to auto open pdfs

Question

I followed instructions provided here(How to create a shortcut for user's build system in Sublime Text?) to compile latex documents in xelatex, and on top of that I would also like it to automatically open pdf after compiling just like with latexmk, how can I achieve that? The document is built just fine, but I have to open it each time manually.

Answer 1

Here's an extension to the CompileWithXelatexCommand implementation that successfully opens the PDF in my default PDF viewer.

import sublime, sublime_plugin
import os
import time

class CompileWithXelatexCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
    def run(self, edit):
        if '/usr/texbin' not in os.environ['PATH']:
            os.environ['PATH'] += ':/usr/texbin'

        base_fname = self.view.file_name()[:-4]
        pdf_fname = base_fname + ".pdf"
        self.view.window().run_command('exec',{'cmd': ['xelatex','-synctex=1','-interaction=nonstopmode',base_fname]})

        tries = 5
        seconds_to_wait = 1
        while tries > 0:
            if os.path.isfile(pdf_fname):
                break
            time.sleep(seconds_to_wait)
            seconds_to_wait *= 2
            tries -= 1

        os.system("open " + pdf_fname)

The polling loop is required; otherwise, the open call may happen before the PDF has been generated. There may be a cleaner way to synchronously exec a sequence of commands via run_command.

I don't have access to Windows now, but from this post you'll probably just need to change "open " to "start ". The PATH initialization logic will either need to be eliminated or adjusted.