Re: texexec

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 08:02 PM 2/10/01 +0100, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I'm getting so used to ConTeXt that I sometime
>run texexec on my LaTeX documents. So I found
>that it would be nice if texexec had (possibly
>limited) support for non-ConTeXt format, especially
>plain and LaTeX.
>
>I could then link .tex files to texexec without worries.
>
>E.g., when texexec recognizing a LaTeX document,
>it simply bails out; it would be nice if it closed
>the cont-?? session and started a latex session

if you run a latex doc trough context, it should abort, since: 

\def\documentstyle%
  {\showmessage{\m!systems}{3}{}
   \stoptekst}

\let\documentclass\documentstyle

>(possibly running enough times to fix cross-refs, plus
>running bibtex and makeindex etc---and stopping after
>no more than 10 --configurable-- runs, to prevent
>hangups when non-converging LaTeX documents are parsed;
>such features are implemented in the MiKTeX program texify).
>Plain support would be even less mess. Is it much work to do?

Implementing it is not so much a problem i think, but my knowledge of latex
is minimal and i never run it. Actually, if i would need it, i would
probably implement it -) Running bibtex is on the todo list anyway. 

the "number of runs" limit is already implemented. 

>Recognizing a format should not be much work, especially
>if using well-behaved distributions AND well-behaved files
>that use the %&fmtname metacommand. Well, LaTeX files can be
>recognized by \documentclass, anyway. And the user could
>always force in some way the format in case of misrecognitions.

Well, actually texexec can handle other formats: 

  texexec --format=plain 

works well. And afaik latex works too, so 

  texexec --make --make --format=latex.ltx 

works too. I didn't test is, but i suppose that 

% format=latex 

as a first line should work,

Hans

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