[latexrefman] Fwd: What does « write part of a line » mean ?

[Vincent Belaïche]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
De : Vincent Belaïche <vincent.belaiche at gmail.com>
Date: mar. 31 mars 2020 à 06:56
Subject: Re: [latexrefman] What does « write part of a line » mean ?
To: Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org>


I think that the intention of « write to the operating system » was that
the command interpretation is done by the shell, not by LaTeX — well
since I am not the original author of that menu description, I am just
speculating what Jim had at head. So you really pass the command as is
and its interpretation will not be the same if you are using MSDoS or
bash as a shell.

It is worth saying that because there is an obvious portability issue
for complexe commands.

I think that there is a phrase for that : « Do a system call » / « Faire
un appel système » would be both more concise and more clear.

If you agree I can do the change, as anyway I have to update the other
one in the French version.

  V.

Le mar. 31 mars 2020 à 00:57, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> a écrit :
>
>     Description of \message menu entry in node \write.
>
> I changed it to:
> * \message::          Write text to log file and terminal.
>
>     My understanding is that the line is completely written expect for the EOL.
>
> \message has nothing to do with lines, one way or another. It just
> writes text. TeX might insert a line break, or not.
>
> While I was at it, I changed the \write18 description to:
> * \write18::          Run an operating system command.
>
> "Write to the operating system" (what was there before)
> feels too clever. --thanks, karl.