hvextern

Steve Litt slitt at troubleshooters.com
Wed Jun 7 05:59:34 UTC 2023


Hi all,

I just found out today that Herbert Voss has recently (starting about a
year ago) created software, called hvextern, that takes a separate
source code file, and turns it into an image file for inclusion in your
document. Here's a quote from https://ctan.org/pkg/hvextern?lang=en :

"This package allows to write METAPOST, TEX, ConTEXt, LATEX, LuaTEX,
LuaLATEX, XETEX, XELATEX, Lua, Perl, or Python source code into an
external file, run that file via shell-escape to create PDF, PNG, or
text output, and include that output automatically into the main LATEX
document."

This means that as the source code changes, you just rerun hvextern and
recompile your LaTeX document. I see no reason why this can't be used
in LyX too. If you're a technical author like I am, this just might be
a pretty big deal.

If you want a several-page detailed description of hvexern and its use
and capabilities, you can see Herbert's article at
https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb43-3/tb135voss-extern.pdf . It was included in
in TUGboat volume 43, #3. 

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm


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