[texworks] Early thoughts

[Jonathan Kew]

On 22 Sep 2008, at 6:52 AM, Will Robertson wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org>  
> wrote:
>>   used to set the encoding, typesetting program, etc., without  
>> having to
>>   "dirty" the file with %! flags.
>>
>> Personally I think it is better to have fundamental information about
>> the file (like the encoding and engine) in the file.  That way when  
>> you
>> mail it to someone else or distribute it, it is closer to being
>> self-contained.
>
> True. (In this case, no reason the %! lines couldn't be present but
> hidden in the file itself, but exposed in the UI in this "document
> preferences" dialog.)

Hmm, not sure how I feel about that. The user may still type a new  
%!.... line straight into the editor, not realizing there's a hidden  
one; then we have to figure out how to manage that from a UI point of  
view. Could get a bit confusing. But I'll think about it.

>
>
> On a tangential note, I've always wanted to be able to write
>  %! execute = latex #1; bibtex #1
> or something like that. Another example:
>  %! execute = latex #1.ins; latex #1.dtx
>
> Open a little to malicious use, I suppose.

As in

   %! execute = rm -rf *

for example? :)

Not really any worse than any other environment like a shell or  
scripting language that lets people call arbitrary system commands.

Interesting idea, though.

JK