[OS X TeX] TeXShop's %& ugly bug

[Maarten Sneep]

On 10 sep 2004, at 9:34, Jérôme Laurens wrote:

> I once asked the list for the best way to add this kind of meta data 
> to the TeX source file.
> I find intrusive this kind of policy and wanted to take advise from 
> real users before deliberately polluting the source.
>
> No one answered except Gerben Wierda who cleverly pointed out that the 
> syntax of the meta data should in no way interfere with other existing 
> stuff.
> This is why iTeXMac defined its own syntax and replaced the %& prefix 
> by the %!iTeXMac.

I'd like to add that there should be no real reason to reinvent the 
wheel: emacs has added meta-data information to tex and other 
file-types for years. The important ones (master-file and 
character-encoding) are all there, and I think adding some application 
specific ones would not be horribly hard.

Addopting their scheme buys you tight integration with another widely 
used application, and eases interchange with other users in 
collaborative environments (why someone would use emacs is beyond me, I 
guess it is good at making coffee ;)

But indeed: %& is reserved for use by tex itself, although the advent 
of pdftex has made the construct harder to use, unless you do 
everything with pdfetex (I believe it can act like any of the formats 
in common use, though I'm not sure context is on the list).

Maarten

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