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From: Patrick Gundlach <pg@levana.de>
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Subject: Re: MetaFun on Mac OS X
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 12:26:22 +0100
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Hi,

sorry I cannot help you with macos x now. Maybe in a month when I got new 
ibook (not sure yet if I really should buy it...)

> 1. I do not know how to "enable \write18". Exactly how is this written
> into the file texmf.cnf, and

on my linux box, I have in texmf.cnf:

% Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
shell_escape = t

but with web2c tex (I think it should work with yor tex)  you can also say 

tex --shell-escape myfile.tex

> 2. I do not know whether the test "\immediate\write18{echo It works}"
> passes, there is no error message and "echo It works" appears on the
> terminal demonstrating that \write18 has gone passed without obvious
> error. However TeX does not exit so I type \end. The logfile is included
> immediately below:-

ok, here is my testfile:
----------------write18test.tex--------------
\immediate\write18{cat write18test.tex}

\bye
------------------end of file--------------
the answer with write18 enabled is
---------
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
(write18test.tex\immediate\write18{cat write18test.tex}

\bye

 )
No pages of output.
Transcript written on write18test.log.
-----------
and without write18 feature enabled:
-----------
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
(write18test.tex
cat write18test.tex
 )
No pages of output.
Transcript written on write18test.log.
------------

`cat' in the first line of the tex source is a unix specific command that 
outputs its argument, which in this case is my tex-source itself. So in the 
first output (write18 enabled) you see that the source file is output again 
and in the second case (no write18 enabled) there is only the line with 
`cat write18test.tex'. You can also say
\immediate\write18{ls]
to output the listing of the current working directory (only works on 
unix-like systems, so it should be fine on your macos x)

HTH
Patrick, who is getting close to a texshow integrated in emacs... :-)