Re: temp file name conflicts in unattended document generation

[ecashin@coe.uga.edu (Ed L. Cashin)]

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

> In the current/next release when one says \protectbufferstrue in for
> instance cont-sys.tex, temporary files will be prefixed. The
> protection concerns the utility file copy, used to determine if more
> runs are needed, the buffers used in a run and in figure inclusion
> (put a table in a buffer and include it as 'external' figure and you
> can scale etc like any figure), mpgraphics, mprun (a different kind
> of graphics), and --still undocument but very well present-- the
> context_to_mp status info file, which makes it possible to set up
> page backgrounds spanning/combining areas, etc. Especially handling
> the mp files is important, because in a next release I will
> introduce extensive embedded graphic support, acting on graphic
> layers etc. Of course the texexec option file is also protected now.

I am really looking forward to learning to use those features.  I
think that some of them are documented in some presentation papers
by Hans Hagen that I read a long time ago.  

> Now, prefixing is handled low level by: 
> 
> \def\bufferprefix%
>   {\ifprotectbuffers\jobname-\fi}
> 
> Technically, I can let texexec redefine this macro in the option file.
> The best place for specifying the alternative prefix is probably the
> texexec.ini file. Something: 
> 
>   for tetex set TeXScratchPath to /var/tmp/$client-id
> 
> or so. which would result in 
> 
>   print OPT "\\def\\bufferprefix{/var/tmp/$client-id/\n"
> 
> (of course I have to resolve the id first). 
> 
> This would at least provide a decent cleanup method. Now, how is this on
> windows? 

It seems like any hard-coded value for a temp directory is bound to
cause problems.  

-- 
--Ed Cashin                     PGP public key:
  ecashin@coe.uga.edu           http://www.coe.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/