[OS X TeX] TeXShop and files on a network

[Ross Moore]

Hello Stephen,

On 04/10/2006, at 10:35 PM, Stephen Moye wrote:

> We are using TeXShop on files that exist on a (Mac OS X) server. If  
> we close the document and open it again, and then TeX the file, the  
> TeXing stops with a warning that the log file is in use. What is  
> happening, and what can we do about it?

Are you saying that you make TeX jobs run in response to requests
submitted via a web-page ?

Whenever you do this kind of thing, you need to make sure that you
do not get multiple simultaneous requests to process the same job.
Thus each request should first *copy* the job to a unique directory,
then process it in there. Serve up the resulting PDF file to your  
client,
then clean up by deleting the complete directory.
Of course you'll need to ensure that something sensible is done,
in the case where there is a TeX error causing the job to fail.


If, on the other hand, you are simply preparing PDFs for later
serving as static files, then there is no need to prepare them
within a shared directory. Just prepare the jobs somewhere else
and copy the results into place when you know they are perfect.
This way you can keep the .log files with the sources, so that
you can examine their content, should unforeseen problems occur
and you need the .log to get clues about the cause.

This is perhaps safer too, as the constant use by the web-server
means that the server-disk is more likely to be the one that
may crash with data-loss.


>
> Thank you.
>
> Stephen Moye


Hope this helps,

	Ross

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/