Re: Max Chernoff, Bruno, ConTeXt

On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 04:21 (-0700), Max Chernoff wrote:

<snip>

> I don't personally use SyncTeX, and I suspect that most ConTeXt users
> don't either.

Speaking as (apparently!) a member of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, I
would like to report that I use synctex (via emacs + auctex) and that, at
least in the ConTeXt stand-alone distribution, it works fine with no muss
and no fuss.

I should mention that I use LMTX.  (This morning I was planning on trying
out the tests on the MkIV/LMTX files that someone sent yesterday, if/when I
find them, and reporting back on how things worked with TL2026 on my
system.)

I did have an issue with it maybe two years ago when I was a new ConTeXt
user, but a little conversation with Hans here and a bug report to AUCTeX
there and all was good.  And still is good.

> It would obviously be best if it were working, but I don't think that it
> necessarily needs to be a blocker for the MacTeX release.  But I also use
> a plain text editor and compile everything from the command line,

Tsk tsk Max.  Come over to the dark side and use emacs and AUCTeX. ;-)

> so I'm probably not the right person to comment on how important it is :)

It is very important!  My productivity (such as it is) would drop by 70 or
80% without synctex working.


>> But if the issue os solely that ConTeXt is using an old sync file, maybe
>> that isn't really an issue because we have this WORKING method to use
>> ConTeXt sync.

> I only have Okular and the "synctex" executable installed for testing,
> and I can't get either of them to work with ConTeXt (but they both work
> with LuaLaTeX).

I will admit I haven't tried out Okular.  With emacs I use currently use
PDF-view.  I did use evince for a bit with emacs, but there are some
annoyances with evince that I didn't need in my life.

> But since you two were able to get ConTeXt working TeXShop/TeXworks, this
> suggests that there's something editor-dependent here, but I don't know
> enough to know whether it's ConTeXt or my editors that are faulty.  But
> these recent posts on the ConTeXt mailing list

> https://mailman.ntg.nl/archives/list/[email protected]/message/URJTH64ES43OFEDI4GSUGYRA4ZP3MUB5/

> https://mailman.ntg.nl/archives/list/[email protected]/message/2HZKEF6KGSEPL3MRUAEZ7XDW5TWGYD7Q/

I will agree that the relationship between those options is a bit
mysterious.

Having said that, given that to get LMTX to *not* stop on error requires
heroic efforts(*), there seems to be little reason to bother with
--nonstopmode anyway.

I see that MkIV happily stops on errors, like good old plain TeX.  But in
the stand-alone distribution I am having a hard time to convince context to
output a .synctex file when it is running in MkIV mode.  Well, it does
output it, but it vanishes again.

I will ask on the context mailing list about this.

> shows that SyncTeX works for at least two other people, so I suspect
> that it's my setup that's broken, and not (necessarily) ConTeXt.

I'll report back on this list if I learn anything.

                                Jim