Skills for TexLive under VsCode

Record some $ LaTeX $ packages and installation and usage skills.

📚 1. Packages

1.1. Packages for Code: minted

• import package minted for code highlighting.

  \usepackage{minted}

• Before using minted, you should have python version>2.7 and install pygments first.

  python -V
  
  pip install pygments

• It may be show error message

  You must invoke LaTeX with the -shell-escape flag`. 

• The reason is that the minted package needs to call the pygments package to highlight the code, and the pygments package needs to call the system command. The -shell-escape parameter is used to allow the minted package to call the system command.

• It’s necessary to add -shell-escape parameter to the setting file, the following json file is a part of it.

  "latex-workshop.latex.tools": [
          {
              "name": "xelatex",
              "command": "xelatex",
              "args": [
                  "--shell-escape",
                  "-synctex=1",
                  "-interaction=nonstopmode",
                  "-file-line-error",
                  "%DOCFILE%"
              ]
          },
          {
              "name": "pdflatex",
              "command": "pdflatex",
              "args": [
                  "--shell-escape",
                  "-synctex=1",
                  "-interaction=nonstopmode",
                  "-file-line-error",
                  "%DOCFILE%"
              ]
          },
          {
              "name": "latexmk",
              "command": "latexmk",
              "args": [
                  "--shell-escape",
                  "-synctex=1",
                  "-interaction=nonstopmode",
                  "-file-line-error",
                  "-pdf",
                  "-outdir=%OUTDIR%",
                  "%DOCFILE%"
              ]
          },
          {
              "name": "bibtex",
              "command": "bibtex",
              "args": [
                  "%DOCFILE%"
              ]
          }
      ],

• Then it may also show error message

  You must have `pygmentize' installed to use this package.

• This is because you installed pygments failed or the pygments package is not in the system path. In windows 10 or later versions, there is a inside python version in Disk C.

• You will find pygmentize.exe in path: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\Scripts, add the path to the system path, then it will work.

• Example for minted package

  \begin{minted}[linenos=true,frame=lines,framesep=2mm]{python}
  def quick_sort(arr):
      if len(arr) < 2:
          return arr
      else:
          pivot = arr[0]
          less = [i for i in arr[1:] if i <= pivot]
          greater = [i for i in arr[1:] if i > pivot]
          return quick_sort(less) + [pivot] + quick_sort(greater)
  \end{minted}