[OS X TeX] altpdflatex - back compatibility please

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

It is probably stupid of me to comment here because I haven't yet  
released
TeXShop 2.04 and 1.41 (I'm concentrating on the MacTeX installer).

Joachim Kock makes a good point about making sure software works
for users who don't upgrade. He wrote

> By removing those scripts, the frontend writer wishing to use the  
> scripts
> is forced to either formally require a new version of tetex (gwtex) or
> write complicated instructions in the manual or 'readme',  
> explaining that
> in certain distributions you have to do one thing, and in other
> distributions you have to do some other thing, and it is akward to  
> describe
> precisely what versions because there are so many components  
> involved and
> it is not clear which version number you should refer to or where  
> the user
> can find this information.

Actually, the upcoming TeXShops work like this:

     When the user typesets using the script specified in TeXShop's
     tex + dvi + distiller preference, the program checks to see if  
this preference is
     altpdftex ***. If it is, then TeXShop checks to see if simpdftex  
is available in
     the TeX binary directory. And if so, TeXShop changes altpdftex to
     simpdftex tex in the preference, keeping any other flags that  
were present.

So this should work automatically. I'll try to get this version  
released fairly soon.

Dick 
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