[texworks] Project Management was: Re: XeLaTeX Typsetting tool

[Paul A Norman]

On 22 July 2011 05:56, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2011-07-17 04:57, Paul A Norman wrote:
>> In terms of project management (and its development in TeXworks)...
>>
>> 1. When licensed under Open conditions, otf and ttf fonts should
>> obviously always accompany the project (in case they are not on the
>> recipient team member's system) - and in any event should always be
>> included for archiving with/in the project.
>> Do either LuaTeX or XeLaTeX allow utilising  font(s) for use from a
>> nominated project directory? Is there a files path type situation as
>> with \insertgraphics - \graphicspath{} ?
>>
>> 2. I have seen packages in the past for LaTeX (can't think of one
>> right now) that will gather up all the files used in a LaTeX project,
>> is there anything in LuaTeX and XeLaTeX that will accomplish that for
>> .ttf .otf fonts as well especially if the project is only relying on
>> fonts that are installed by the system i.e. are not in a project
>> directory but say c:\windows\fonts.
>>
>> --If not/or even if so, is that something we c/should engineer in
>> total or in part form TeXworks as a part of project management?
>
> so far, no definite proposal for project management has been jotted down
> - it's been mainly an idea in the back of the head.
> As part of that idea, however, I've always imagined two complementary
> approaches:
>
> 1) the as-is way, with many separate files (sources, graphics, ...), and
> probably a single additional file containing information about the project.
>
> 2) the "bundle", with all the above files wrapped up in a single file
> (e.g., zip archive or similar).
>
> (1) provides backwards compatibility, whereas (2) would allow for easy
> archiving, sending, and collaboration (without version control).
> Switching between the two should of course be seamless to the user.
>
> So, for the as-is way (1), I'd rather not bundle everything, as that
> would be a maintenance nightmare, not to mention a waste of space (if
> use the same resources like fonts in several projects).

 As for (2), I
> can imagine to let the user customize what additional files (such as
> fonts) to include in such a bundle apart from the essentials.

Yes I think options would be the way to go. Having had to stand with
people who have "lost track" of their fonts under other publishing
systems in the past, the anguish for them can be considerable,
anything like that would be great.

Embedding or attaching to a special archive, or to all copies of a pdf
if not inappropriate, does not increase the overhead too much
normally.
Not re-inverting the wheel -There are existing  LaTeX packages for
including/attaching the original (or any) files in your produced pdf
and making compressed archives of project files, maybe we could tap
into somethings like the following ...

Also can future proof the question that was asked here once, "how can
I turn my pdf back into a LateX document I lost all copies of my
original documents ...

This one is by Heiko Oberdiek http://www.ctan.org/pkg/attachfile2

"This package can be used to attach files to a PDF document. It is a
further development of Scott Pakin’s package
http://www.ctan.org/pkg/attachfile for pdfTeX. Apart from bug fixes,
this package adds support for dvips, some new options, and gets and
writes meta information data about the attached files."

And also by Heiko Oberdiek http://www.ctan.org/pkg/embedfile 2011/04/13 v2.6

"The PDF format (3) allows the inclusion of les inside the PDF
document. The included les can be bound to an annotation on a page. Or
they can be recorded in a sorted list of embedded les. The packages
attachle or attachle2 follow the rst approach, this package uses the
latter method."

This next package can help by gathering up files needed to typeset
your document. You could then attach or embed the archive in a special
copy of your pdf (or all copies if it did not matter).
http://www.ctan.org/pkg/bundledoc

"The bundledoc package is a post-processor for the snapshot package
that bundles together all the classes, packages and files needed to
build a given LaTeX document. It reads the .dep file that snapshot
produces, finds each of the files mentioned therein, and archives them
into a single .tar.gz (or .zip, or whatever) file, suitable for moving
across systems, transmitting to a colleague, etc."

I don't know i it can be coaxed into handling fontspec fonts yet or not.

Also check out http://www.ctan.org/pkg/texdirflatten,
http://www.ctan.org/characterization/primary/tools/document-management/
and http://www.ctan.org/keyword/include

There may be others I have not encountered yet.

Paul

>
> But as hinted at above, none of this is in any way an official policy,
> just my personal thoughts.
>
> Cheers,
> Stefan
>