[Mac OS X TeX] Test request for new altpdftex script

[Gerben Wierda]

I have rewritten altpdftex, the TeX->dvips->distiller driver that comes 
with my teTeX distribution. It is now written in /bin/sh instead of 
tcsh. That gives me better signal handling. As a result, there will be 
less temporary directory garbage in /tmp when the frontend kills a 
running process in the right way. For now, I need people just to test 
the script to see if it is allright compared to the previous version.

Download it from ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/comp/macosx/altpdftex and then 
replace /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current/altpdftex with 
the new script:
	cp altpdftex /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-
current/altpdftex
	chmod 775 /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current/altpdftex

G

Information for front end developers:

The sh in Mac OS X is a POSIX sh, which means that my script is still 
uninterruptable when the child (e.g. TeX) blocks as it is waiting for 
input (i.e. on a TeX error). There is a way around this, by sending the 
terminate signal when you want to kill the typesetting process not to 
the process id of the altpdftex script process but to the negative value 
of that process id which kills the process group, including the blocking 
TeX. Hence,  for instance in Cocoa apps:

change calls

	[myTask terminate]

into

	// Terminate the process group
	kill( -[myTask processIdentifier], SIGTERM);

If you do not do this, the process will get a SIGKILL later on from 
Cocoa and that cannot be caught, hence the non-removal of the temporary 
directory.


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