[pdftex] Proposal for new feature.

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 03:53:47PM +0000, John R. Culleton wrote:

> All forms of TeX including pdftex are inherently command line
> programs. I am trying to write a guide for beginners where they
> can execute e.g., pdftex or texexec by pushing a button on a
> button bar window. Setting up the window is easy in  TCL/Tk. But when the
> pdftex run fails, there is no pdf output. Commands such as
> texexec --batch or pdftex -halt-on-error will still fail to
> produce any output. 
> 
> What I propose is a switch that when set and an error
> occurs insert a \bye command just before the error.

\bye is a macro and can cause other errors.

> That way the
> user would have an output pdf file truncated at the point of the
> error. 

The kind of error can be so severe, that it prevents a valid
pdf output file. I think, an invalid output file is even worse.

And if the error occurs so early that there is nothing to
output, you can get again "an output file without pages"
(= no output file).

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>
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