Using LaTeX with Scid

Latex is an attractive and comprehensive documentation system - used by Scid for previewing player and opening reports and exporting games - but it is tough to install and use.

Scid vs. PC no longer uses Chess12 for LaTeX output. The new Skak implementation is mostly complete, but not quite. It remains todo: Implement comments inside variations, castling diagrams, and adding a "Compact" option which disables diagrams and score graphs and restricts the game header to (half the page width).

Installation

• latex-xcolor (xcolor.sty)
• texlive-games (xskak.sty)
• texlive-generic-extra, (lambda.sty)
• texlive-latex-extra (xifthen.sty)
• pgf (pgfcore.sty)
• lmodern (lmodern.sty)
• texlive-pstricks (pstricks-add.sty)
• texlive-xetex (xelatex)

Generating PDF

Latex will generally need to be converted to PDF. Scid's Latex preview function will do this, but for manually converting to pdf, use this command xelatex file.tex

The older method for doing this is

• latex file.tex // This will create a file.dvi file
• dvi2ps file.dvi // Then this will create a file.ps file
• ps2pdf file.ps // Then this will create a file.pdf

Viewing

To use the Latex preview options for the Opening and Player Reports, it is recommend to have a pdf viewer available in your environment/system. Compatible viewers are

• Linux - evince, okular, etc
• OS X - TODO
• Windows - TODO

More generally, on Linux the tex output generated by Scid is first converted into pdf format using "pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode" , and then opened by the viewer (default evince).

Both the renderer and viewer are configurable in Options-> Exporting-> Latex

OS X Notes

Ileano writes

• On El Capitan ... It is necessary to add in the Latex options "\usepackage{auto-pst-pdf}" , and call the pdflatex tool with "pdflatex -shell-escape myfile.tex". Also ... add "PATH=$PATH:/Library/TeX/Root/bin/x86_64-darwin" to the startup scripts