[Mac OS X TeX] put files in bundles?

[Bruno Voisin]

> #  I wonder if it would be a good option (for TeXShop) to save all the
> #  files generated on a typesetting-run into a MacOS X bundle, so one
> #  would see only one single "file" in the Finder with the .tex .pdf
> #  .aux .log etc. files inside.
> #  So moving and renaming of this entire bunch would be very simple and
> #  TeX associated documents would be very nice organized.

Yes I think that would be a really nice idea, pretty much like the way 
Textures bundled the .dvi file in the resource fork of the .tex source 
and did not create a .log file but displayed it in a TeX log window. 
Then you don't have to learn about the internal cuisine of TeX and 
associated programs (what files are created, and what for), unless you 
absolutely need to. Very Mac-like!

On the other hand I suspect teTeX would have difficulties to cope with 
this, since TeX and its associated programs (BibTeX, MakeIndex, dvips, 
pdfTeX, ...) expect to find and read files with specific extensions. Or 
even just LaTeX, which needs an .aux file and may use .toc, .bbl, 
.ind, ... files.

> Two remarks:
> 1) although bundles are really direcories, and as such platform 
> independent,
>    when sending such a "file" via e-mail, one would still need to make 
> an
>    archive (tar for example).
> 2) How would you handle a tree with several files, the user cannot 
> create
>    his/her own tree, so that needs to be handled by the program as 
> well. But the
>    user would need to type in the path in the source when including the 
> file.
>
> In short, I think this would be very messy.

Is it really necessary to go to such complexities, isn't it possible to 
have only TeX-generated files bundled together, not the whole directory 
structure created by the user to typeset a book with figures etc.?

By the way, how does Project Builder deal with projects? Does it create 
bundles? (I'm no developer myself, so that's really a candid question.)

By the way, too, since Project Builder is on the Developer Tools CD 
which came freely with my Mac OS X packages (10.0 then 10.1), is it 
possible to use it as an external editor for TeXShop (probably an 
overkill, but...). Is it possible to define TeX-specific features for 
it, like a TeX menu? (I'm thinking especially of the first 
implementations of OzTeX and DirectTeX, which both suggested MPW Shell 
as an external editor of choice.)

Bye,

Bruno Voisin


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