feat: LaTeX PDF preview pane using tectonic (no TeX Live required)

[NandishNaik01]

Pre-submit Checks

• I have searched Warp feature requests and there are no duplicates
• I have searched Warp docs and my feature is not there

Describe the solution you'd like?

Add a live PDF preview pane for .tex files in Warp. When editing a LaTeX document, a split pane shows the compiled PDF output and updates on every save — no external TeX Live installation required.

The entire stack can be implemented using existing Rust crates:

• tectonic — self-contained LaTeX engine written in Rust. Bundles its own TeX distribution, compiles .tex → .pdf with a single crate dependency. No pdflatex or TeX Live needed on the user's machine.
• pdfium-render — Rust bindings to Google's PDFium library. Converts PDF pages to pixel buffers that can be rendered via Warp's existing wgpu pipeline.

Proposed behaviour:

• Opening a .tex file automatically shows a preview pane (dismissible)
• Compiles in a background thread on every save — no UI blocking
• LaTeX compile errors displayed inline in the editor (line numbers, error messages)
• Zoom + scroll in the preview pane
• Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows — no system dependencies

Proposed technical stack:

User saves .tex file in Warp editor
        ↓
crates/latex_preview detects save via existing file watcher
        ↓
tectonic::latex_to_pdf() runs in background thread
        ↓
pdfium-render converts PDF page → wgpu-compatible pixel buffer
        ↓
New WarpUI preview pane renders the pixel buffer alongside the editor

Is your feature request related to a problem?

LaTeX is the standard document format in academia, research, and technical writing. Currently, working on .tex files in Warp means constantly switching to an external app (Overleaf, TeXShop, VS Code + LaTeX Workshop) just to see what the compiled document looks like. There is no terminal today that offers native LaTeX preview — Warp would be the first.

Additional context

The syntax highlighting foundation for LaTeX is already being added to Warp via arborium (see bearcove/arborium#202). This feature would be the next natural step — from "LaTeX source is coloured" to "LaTeX source is live-compiled and previewed."

Relevant prior art:

• VS Code LaTeX Workshop (most popular LaTeX extension, 10M+ installs)
• Overleaf (cloud-based, but sets the UX standard users expect)
• TeXShop (macOS native, shows what the split-pane UX should feel like)

Operating system (OS)

Cross-platform

How important is this feature to you?

4

[oz-for-oss]

@NandishNaik01

Here's what I found while triaging this issue:

This looks like a feature gap rather than a bug. Warp currently has a rendered Markdown preview path, but not a native .tex compilation and PDF preview workflow.

Maintainer details

I concluded that feature request for a native live LaTeX-to-PDF preview pane in Warp's code editor, likely spanning editor, pane layout, file-save/watch handling, and new PDF rendering infrastructure..

Triage

This is a substantial feature request for a native live LaTeX PDF preview workflow inside Warp's code editor. The request is clear and appears to be a feature gap rather than a bug: .tex files are currently recognized as text-editable files, and Warp has a rendered/raw Markdown preview flow, but there is no LaTeX compiler integration, PDF rendering pane, or save-triggered preview pipeline in the current codebase.

Likely implementation areas

• Code editor file opening and save handling: app/src/code/view.rs, app/src/code/local_code_editor.rs, and app/src/code/global_buffer_model.rs.
• Existing rendered Markdown file preview pattern: app/src/notebooks/file/mod.rs.
• File watching and update propagation: crates/warp_files/src/lib.rs.
• File-type recognition for .tex/.latex as text files: crates/warp_util/src/file_type.rs.

This likely needs product/design specification before implementation because the proposed UX introduces a new preview pane, zoom/scroll interactions, error presentation, dependency/download behavior, and cross-platform rendering expectations.

Duplicate check

I checked open issues across the repository and the closest related requests are distinct: #9677 is about rendering LaTeX math inside Markdown/terminal output, #9729 is about image previews in the code file pane, #10527 is about Markdown preview wrapping, and #6876 is a broader request for Office/PDF support. None matches live .tex compilation to a PDF preview pane closely enough to mark this as a duplicate.

This is my automated analysis and may be incorrect. A maintainer will verify the details.

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