[texworks] inconsistens because of help-files?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Aug 21, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:

> 
> 
> Herbert Schulz wrote:
> 
>> Was that really a LaTeX file you were attempting to typeset or a Plain TeX file? That error is NOT coming from latexmk but rather from latex attempting to process your file.
> 
> I wasn't actually attempting to typeset anything, Herb.
> I assumed that if I typed "LaTeXMK", it would
> either prompt me for the name of the file I wanted
> to process, or give a "usage" report such as
> 
> 	LaTeXMK <input file> <options>
> 
> Instead it did neither, and apparently tried to
> process files at random.  Every time I entered
> Ctrl-Z, it went on to find another file, which
> again it did not like.  Only Ctrl-C would persuade
> it to stop.  All very confusing !
> 
> ** Phil.


Howdy,

The documentation for latexmk (texdoc latexmk) says

************
One or more files can be specified. If no files are specified, latexmk will, by default, run on all files in the current working directory with a ".tex" extension. This behavior can be changed: see the description concerning the @default_files variable in the section "List of configuration vari- ables usable in initialization files".

If a file is specified without an extension, then the ".tex" extension is automatically added, just as LaTeX does. Thus, if you specify:

latexmk foo
then latexmk will operate on the file "foo.tex".
************

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)