[OS X TeX] bibliography aliases

[Justin Walker]

On Jan 7, 2005, at 12:02, Matthew Inglis wrote:

> Is it possible to use OSX aliases to put "copies" of a master .bib 
> file in all the folders where you've got work that's ongoing in LaTeX? 
> The answer to this appears to be no -- and google is unfruitful -- but 
> it's such an obvious thing to want to do that it feels like there must 
> be a way.

Herb gave you the right answer, but to answer your question directly, 
Aliases are a Mac OS concept that don't translate well for use by Unix 
apps.  For example, I have a .pdf file, I make an alias to it, and 
select the alias in Finder, and it shows up as a .pdf file with the 
proper contents (as shown in the preview column).

However, in a shell window:

$ file ../ArtinLfunc.pdf
../ArtinLfunc.pdf: empty
$ cat ../ArtinLfunc.pdf
$

so, in short, don't use Mac OS Aliases if you are using "native" unix 
apps.

I can, however, 'open' an Alias, and things appear to work as expected 
('open' is a savvy app, unlike other command-line programs).

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large  *
Institute for General Semantics        |    Men are from Earth.
                                        |    Women are from Earth.
                                        |       Deal with it.
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