[OS X TeX] TeX wrappers

[Maarten Sneep]

On 15 sep 2004, at 13:47, Jérôme Laurens wrote:

> does the .aux file contain information about the fonts used?
> I am not sure it always contains information about the version of the 
> packages used.
>
> In fact I don't have any idea of "all information you need".

No, it does provide you with a complete set of used references, a list 
of the \include'd and \input'ted (user) files and all citations. This 
information does not appear in the log file, but can be exceedingly 
useful for frontend applications: want a list of defined \labels (to 
select an entry for use in a \ref{} command), want to navigate to a 
certain chapter? you get the idea (I hope).

The end of the story is that the package version info appears in the 
log, along with the used fonts. Some other data, more of run-time 
interest, appears only in the aux.

As more of a meta-remark: I have no idea of what "all the information I 
want" is, I guess it depends on what I'd like to do. I think for a 
front-end, the information in the aux file is more interesting. For 
archival purposes and helping new users resolving their problems the 
log might contain more.

> My only experience of a failure in texing an old document was due to a 
> change in the geometry package,
> which is limited. Can we collect experiences about backwards 
> compatibility failures?

geometry, figures (not using the graphics package, but epsfile or 
something like it on older documents).

> Then we will see what kind of information is needed to help in 
> resolving backwards compatibility issues.

That's one relief: new users won't have backward compatibility issues. 
There is one way I sometimes break the aux file (and then removing it 
is the only solution, as this error occurs on reading the aux file, 
which happens before emptying it): add or remove a language to babel.

I guess the document
     http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.pdf
can tell you more, along with the TeX FAQ:
     http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html

Maarten
--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>