Reactio Draw figures for LaTeX

Use Reactio Draw figures in LaTeX documents in VS Code (and in editors built on it, such as Cursor and VSCodium). Works beside LaTeX Workshop, which builds the document and shows the PDF.

Paste a figure with its files

In Reactio Draw, use Copy for LaTeX. In a .tex file, paste (Cmd+V / Ctrl+V):

• the drawing and the files made from it (scheme.reactio, scheme.pdf, scheme.tex) are copied into figures/, beside the main document, never over an existing file: a name that is taken moves the set to scheme-2.*;
• \input{figures/scheme} goes in. On an empty line of the text, outside any figure, it comes inside a whole figure with an empty \caption{} and \label{fig:}, filled in with Tab. In a document with a scheme float (the ACS class achemso, chemstyle, or \newfloat{scheme}) it is a scheme with \label{sch:}; reactioLatex.paste.float picks one always;
• the main document's preamble gets what it lacks: graphicx, tikz, chemnum, \graphicspath{{figures/}} and the \rcmpd definition for compound marks. Lines that are more than plain definitions are shown first.

The main document is the file with \begin{document}, the one named by a % !TeX root = main.tex line, or the document that includes the file you paste into. Without one, a notice names the lines to add.

If a plain paste brings only the \input line, use Paste Figure with Its Files in the editor's context menu (or the Command Palette): it reads the figure from the system clipboard itself.

Edit the figure

Above each line that includes a figure made from a drawing, Edit in Reactio Draw opens the drawing in Reactio Draw. Save it there: Reactio Draw writes scheme.pdf and scheme.tex again, and LaTeX Workshop rebuilds the document on its own (its latex-workshop.latex.autoBuild.run setting, onFileChange by default).

The drawing also opens from the explorer: Edit Figure Source in the context menu of a figure's .tex or .pdf, and a .reactio file opened in VS Code shows an Open in Reactio Draw button. In the PDF, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on a Mac) jumps to the line that includes the figure, where the button is.

Only drawing formats open in another program (.reactio, .cdxml, .cdx, .drawio, .dio, .ipe, .excalidraw, .ggb, .odg), and only from inside the workspace, in a trusted workspace. An .svg asks each time, since its program is often a browser; any other file is only shown in the file manager.

Compound numbers

A mark [[ketone]] in a drawing becomes \rcmpd{ketone} in its .tex; write the same in the text. LaTeX numbers the compounds with chemnum, so the drawing and the text always agree. After a build:

• resting the pointer on \rcmpd{…} or \cmpd{…} shows the compound's number and the figure it is drawn in, with a link to copy the command;
• typing \rcmpd{ or \cmpd{ lists the project's compounds with their numbers and figures.
• a number seen in the PDF finds its compound: Copy Compound by Number in the Command Palette takes the number and copies the exact LaTeX that cites it (\rcmpd{amine.a.num}), and the Compounds view in the explorer lists every compound by number, with that LaTeX and the figure it is drawn in; a click copies it. (The PDF viewer is LaTeX Workshop's, which other extensions cannot add hovers to.)

The numbers are read from the build's .aux file, beside the main document or in LaTeX Workshop's outDir; another folder can be set in reactioLatex.auxDirectory.

Every kind of mark: LaTeX marks.

Figures for a journal

Export Figures for Submission (the editor's context menu, or the Command Palette) writes each figure made from a drawing, cut out of the built document with its compound numbers, into figures-for-submission/, named by its function: Scheme1.pdf and Scheme1.tiff, Figure2.pdf… A second figure in one float is Scheme1b. Journals such as ACS take figures as separate TIFF, PDF or EPS files at 300 dpi for colour, 600 dpi for grayscale and 1200 dpi for line art; set the TIFF's resolution in reactioLatex.export.tiffDpi. The figure files in the drawing's own scheme.pdf carry no numbers (LaTeX sets them over it), so send these instead.

Beside the figures it writes the article itself as one .tex (main.tex), for a journal that builds the LaTeX: the project's \input and \include files are written into it, and each figure from a drawing becomes \includegraphics{Scheme1}, the exported file. The figure's marks stay in an unprinted box after it, so every compound keeps its number in the text. The images, .bib and .bbl files and any class or style files beside the article are copied too, and the copy is built from that folder to check that nothing is missing; its PDF (main.pdf) is put beside it. Your own files do not change. Turn it off with reactioLatex.export.texCopy.

The document is built once more for this, in a scratch folder, with the engine named in a % !TeX program line or pdflatex; the working files are not changed. TIFF is drawn by macOS itself, or by Ghostscript or pdftoppm elsewhere.

The clipboard format

Reactio Draw puts an editable-figure manifest on the clipboard, an open format any drawing program can write; it is described in Lattice's docs/editable-figures.md. A paste can come from any program, so the manifest never names a path on disk, carries at most 32 files and 64 MB, and only figure file types come in.

Settings

License

Apache-2.0. Parts are adapted from Lattice (Apache-2.0); it bundles pdf-lib (MIT). See NOTICE.