Re: synctex issue

Alan,

one correction to a message I had before, and one additional piece of
important info about the message below.

(1) Please ignore the message where I talked about "console".  That was
    both wrong and a red herring.

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026 at 17:39 (-0300), Jim wrote:

> Hi Alan,

> On Sat, Apr 11, 2026 at 13:50 (-0400), Alan Bowen wrote:

>> I changed the engine so that it now reads 
>> 	… synctex=repeat “$1” …

>> I re-did the tests (without the typos ☹️)

>> For the first
>> % synctex edit -o 50:300:300:prd_Aestimatio-05.pdf
>> the error message is
>> 	This is SyncTeX command line utility, version 1.2
>> 	SyncTeX ERROR: No SyncTeX available for prd_Aestimatio-05.pdf
>> 	usage: synctex <subcommand> [options] [args]
>> 	Synchronize TeXnology command-line client, version 1.17

> I get

> This is SyncTeX command line utility, version 1.5
> SyncTeX result begin
> Output:prd_Aestimatio-05.pdf
> Input:c_Contents.tex
> Line:4
> Column:-1
> Offset:0
> Context:
> SyncTeX result end

> I see you are on V 1.2.  I don't know whether that qualifies as "old",
> "ancient" or "archaic".  :-)

> (I see the subtitle of your book is "history of science in the Old World
> before the modern era", which is amusingly apropos.)

> If you are able to update your synctex, that might be a good start.

I have a synctex binary as part of TeXLive.  I only have TL25 and TL26 on
my system, and both of those say
        This is SyncTeX command line utility, version 1.5
        ...
        Synchronize TeXnology command-line client, version 1.21

I also have a synctex binary which is not part of TL, and it says the same
thing.

Do you have an old version of TeXLive on your system?

Or... I just downloaded the source code for TeXShop, and I see it has
version 1.19, not version 1.17.  So I conclude you are running an older
version of TeXShop?  And even then, the most up to date TeXShop is using an
old version of synctex.  I can't say whether that is a problem or not, but
if you can update your TeXShop, that might help.  (Assuming that updating
doesn't cause some other problem.)



>> and for the second 
>> % mtxrun --script synctex --report --page=50 --x=300 --y=300 --tolerance=9999 prd_Aestimatio-05.synctex
>> the error message is
>> 	mtx-synctex     | invalid synctex log file 'prd_Aestimatio-05.synctex'

>> which is the same as before.

> I get
> mtx-synctex     | invalid synctex log file 'c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex'
> which is not the same, but not a tiny bit helpful.

> Why the synctex script is making that complaint is not (yet) obvious to me.

> I'll take a look at mtx-synctex.lua, but in the interim if you can update
> your synctex and synctex library, that might help you.

So here is why I was getting that error, it is now "obvious" to me.

The mtx-synctex script was correctly determining that page 50 is from the
file c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex.  But before it reports that information,
it checks to see if that file exists.

However, you didn't send me the file c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex.  So
mtx-synctex complains bitterly that the missing file is an "invalid synctex
log file".  I find that error message a bit misleading, but one man's clear
error message is another man's confounding error message.

So after I created a file by the name c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex, the
script checked and saw there was such a file, and happily reports the
information requested:

$ mtxrun --script synctex --report --page=50 --x=300 --y=300 --tolerance=10 prd_Aestimatio-05.synctex 
"c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex" 20 0

If I ask my (up-to-date) synctex command-line program the same question:

$ synctex edit -o 50:300:300:prd_Aestimatio-05.pdf 
This is SyncTeX command line utility, version 1.5
SyncTeX result begin
Output:prd_Aestimatio-05.pdf
Input:c_2024-05_STD02_Fincke.tex
Line:20
Column:-1
Offset:0
Context:
SyncTeX result end

I get the same same file and line number.



So, in summary...

The synctex file you sent me seems to be fine.  I don't know whether your
problem is with older versions of the synctex program (or the synctex
library apparently built into TeXShop), or whether something about where it
is looking for files does not agree with where the files really are.

I don't know if I can be of any more help, but if you have more information
or another question, I'll be happy to try to help.

                                Jim
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