[OS X TeX] Long document typesetting problems

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 22, 2009, at 8:00 AM, Pete Chvany wrote:

> A user in a department I support has reported a couple of problems  
> when typesetting long documents. He's using TeXShop 2.26 via the  
> MacTeX-2008 distribution dated 20 March 2009, on Macs running either  
> OS 10.5.7 or 10.5.8.
>
> The symptoms he reports are as follows:
>
> 1. When typesetting a long document after fixing brace mismatches  
> (i.e. problems with misplaced { or } delimiters), he has to delete  
> his .aux files wholesale and start fresh. He reports that he did not  
> have this problem in the past.
>

Howdy,

This is not unusual behavior since some critical information in the  
aux file may have been messed up by the previous error run. This is  
especially true of cross-reference information.

> 2. When he makes small changes and typesets a document again, the  
> document view seems to recall his place in the document incorrectly,  
> though it gets close enough to suggest that it's trying. If he was  
> on page X before re-typesetting, the viewer will return him to page  
> X +/- 2 or +/- 3, but never X. This is also apparently recent  
> behavior.
>

It will depend upon what the change did to pagination. Sometimes small  
changes ina document can change pagination quite a bit. Also, what are  
his TeXShop->Preferences->Preview settings? There may ahe been other  
reports of this behavior; I'm aging and my memory is sometimes a bit  
foggy :-).

> I hope these are appropriate questions for the forum; my role is  
> desktop software and hardware support and my knowledge of TeX goes  
> just deep enough to be shallow, but I'm hoping someone can suggest  
> workarounds, or note that this kind of behavior is to be expected,  
> or that there is a bug fix in work, or something of the sort. Thanks  
> in advance.
>
> *********************************************************
> Pete Chvany

This is a perfectly reasonable place to ask!

By the way the first questions is related to the way TeX operates  
while the second is most likely TeXShop related.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)