[OS X TeX] Bibdesk preview fails

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jan 27, 2006, at 8:29 PM, Adam R. Maxwell wrote:

> ...
> Applications should clean those up when they quit; I didn't write  
> that part of BibDesk's preview, so I'm not sure if it cleans up  
> properly.
>

Howdy,

I don't remember if I've had stuff from BibDesk. The worst  
``offender'' seems to be LaTeXiT which does all of its work in that  
directory. I've also has some files left over from TeXShop; maybe  
whose were there from a failed conversion of a tif to png during the  
short time when ImageMagick had a problem---I don't remember. Also  
things from a few other apps. I should start keeping track of what  
apps leave stuff there.

>> Given that it's a temp directory why doesn't the OS just clean it  
>> out (like other temp directories) when the system boots? Is this  
>> an OS X 10.4.x bug?
>
> I believe this is an OS feature, although I don't recall the  
> justification for it.  Perhaps to allow access to temporary files  
> in case of a hard reset/power outage?  Stuff you put in /tmp does  
> get blown away, but it's wrong for a Cocoa application to use /tmp  
> directly instead of NSTemporaryDirectory().
>
> Adam
>

I guess I can see that as a reason but it is annoying to find that  
trash when I login.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)


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