[texworks] Project Management type stuff

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 14 oct. 2010 à 13:58, Paul A Norman a écrit :

> Have you a reference for that please, I want to check if there are any
> issues on how the path is named whether its OS dependant or what ever,
> does Windows require {{}} type stuff or simillar.
> 
> On 15 October 2010 00:31, Alain Schremmer <schremmer.alain at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
> 
>> \documentclass[11pt]{book}
>>        \usepackage{../StyleSheets/Preamble}
>>        \usepackage{../StyleSheets/AssessmentDocumentConstruction}
>>        \usepackage{../StyleSheets/QuizConstructionParameters}
>>        \usepackage{../StyleSheets/GraphicsPaths}
>> \begin{document}

That's likely distribution-specific and also platform-specific.

Namely, the definition of \usepackage (in latex.ltx) is highly convoluted, it goes through a sequence of cascading definitions involving \RequirePackage and \InputIfFileExists, and in between more obscure stuff like \@onefilewithoptions, \@@input and the like.

But it all seems in the end to go down to the \input TeX primitive, which is implemented at the time TeX is built.

Let me be more specific: in TeX Live, file searching involves kpathsea, which is a C file searching library. So what TeX accepts in TeX Live comes down to what kpathsea accepts. MikTeX must similarly involve its own file searching library, which may place different restrictions on file names and a different syntax for path specification.

Over the years I've seen all sorts of situations on different platforms (Mac and Linux) and different TeX distributions (Textures, OzTeX, DirectTeX, CMacTeX, teTeX, gwTeX, TeX Live). Some accepted file names with spaces directly as \input{file name}, others required quotes \input{"file name"}, others bluntly rejected spaces. Same with 8-bit characters in file names (Textures accepted it, OzTeX rejected it). Textures accepted to typeset in plain TeX a file with spaces in its name, but OzTeX didn't; both refused to typeset in LaTeX a file with a space in its name, owing to the creation and reading of ancillary files (.aux, etc.).

Also in the same distro different TeX programs may see things differently. This may have changed, but originally XeTeX, owing to its Mac roots, was less strict on the use of spaces in file names than pdfTeX.

Similarly the path specification varies from platform to platform. On Mac OS Classic a subfolder Figures in the current directory was specified (in \graphicspath) as :Figures: and a subsubfolder as :Figures:Part1:, but on Mac OS X it's Figures/ and Figures/Part1/, respectively.

So I don't think there is any norm on this, and I'm not even sure where to look for information. I looked briefly at the documentation of kpathsea for TeX Live, and I couldn't find any info.

Bruno Voisin