[OS X TeX] pdflatex figure with the same name as the document?

David Watson dewatson at me.com
Fri May 14 20:22:43 CEST 2010


On May 14, 2010, at 10:40 AM, Josep Maria Font wrote:

> El dia 14/05/2010, a les 03:46, Alan Munn va escriure:
> 
>> For the Mac, this is done at the file system level: you can format a disk to allow case sensitive file names, but there is no setting per se that you can switch on and off once your disk is formatted in the standard Apple way.
> 
> Right, when you format a disk or volume you can choose whether journaled or not, and whether case-sensitive or not. You can check your situation by going to the Apple Menu > About this Mac > More info > looking at your disk(s).
> 
>> Unlike Windows, though, the Mac OS preserves the distinction between upper and lower case in file names, so if you transfer files to a system that does care about case, the names will appear as you actually wrote them.
>> 
>> Apple's version is sort of weird: it preserves the file names, but ignores the difference. Within the terminal, for example, file name completion appears to be case-sensitive: 'app' will not expand to Applications.  But at the same time you can't create two files in the same directory with the same names but different cases.
> 
> I would need some clarification here. I have my disk formatted as "case-sensitive", and I *can* create two files in the same directory with the same names but different cases. I can do this either in the Finder or in the Terminal. They (seem to) appear as different files to the system. This seems to contradict your last assertion. Or is it that they only *look* as different but *are* actually the same file ?
> 

This is how it was with my old laptop.
Be aware however, that if you use Adobe products, you will be much better off using a case-insensitive filesystem.
I know this for a fact with Adobe reader, which I grudgingly tried to use to fill out a grant application.
It simply would not work due to Reader trying to load libraries and plugins with the "incorrect" name.
In other words, they didn't expect that the application would be used on a case-sensitive filesystem, and so the name of the library and/or plugin doesn't match what they coded.
Looking through the strings in their application code, I noticed that they didn't even (at the time) have "house rules" on coding, i.e. they would capitalize function and variable names haphazardly.

It took quite a while before a support representative on the Adobe forums lambasted me with the suggestion that "Apple recommends that you do not use a case-sensitive file system" which is - of course - not true, or else why do they use case sensitivity in their server product?

ARRRG

I ended up using a Windows machine to fill out that grant proposal.
I was seething the entire time.

> However, when I backup to a USB pendrive which is formatted as "case-insensitive", the two files are contemplated as the same file, e.g., if only one is present in the pendrive then the most recent of the two is backed up against the other, irrespectively of the case in the names. Not being aware of this has caused some headaches in the past.
> 
> I have asked in the past about the (dis)advantages of case-sensitive versus case-insensitive, but never received a satisfactory answer. Is there anybody here with a clear one ? Thanks in advance !
> 
> 
> JMaF
> 
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