The tikzmark Package

This is the official home of the development repository for the tikzmark library for LaTeX. This package is for marking a position on a page or within a tikzpicture which can be referred to in another TikZ drawing.

The current published version can be found on CTAN and the documentation is there as a PDF.

To use the most recent version, download the file tikzmark.dtx. To generate the library files, run tex tikzmark.dtx. To generate the documentation, run pdflatex tikzmark.dtx.

TL;DR

The tikzmark package provides a variety of commands which have evolved over the years since I first defined it in 2009. Much of this has taken place on the TeX-SX Q&A (questions tagged tikzmark and just all posts mentioning tikzmark) site so there are many versions in answers on that site, and there have been a few spin-offs by others. There is much on that site that is useful, but due to this evolution sometimes the command used by older answers is not the right one when used with this library.

The main question to ask is: does the command make a node or just a mark? In brief, the original \tikzmark made a node, but then I simplified it to just make a mark.

Marks

• \tikzmark - remembers a location on a page, can be used both inside and outside a tikzpicture, the position is available throughout the entire document, including before it is defined.
• \pgfmark - a more basic location remembering command.
• (pic cs:<name>) - this is how to refer to a remembered mark in a tikzpicture.

Nodes

• \tikzmarknode - creates a node around its contents, and remembers its location; uses some TeX trickery to detect math modes.
• \subnode - when used inside a TikZ node it creates a pseudo-node around its contents that can be used as if it were a node within the surrounding tikzpicture.

Other Features

• Node saving: the marks created by \tikzmark and \pgfmark are available prior to their definition in the document; there is also facility for saving node information to make it available where it wouldn't normally - either earlier in the document or in a different document.
• Pic and scope positioning: nodes can be anchored at certain locations, this extends that concept to pics and scopes.

Additional Libraries

The concept of marking locations for TikZ has inspired a variety of useful routines for particular situations, so are not loaded automatically but can be accessed via \usetikzmarklibrary. These are:

• listings: for highlighting code listings when using the listings package.
• ams: puts a node around the boxes used by AMS math when it typesets equations.
• higlighting: simulates highlighting text delimited by a couple of tikzmarks.