[OS X TeX] Re: ifthenelse in or for engines

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Feb 26, 2007, at 9:16 PM, Bill Rowe wrote:

> On 2/26/07 at 9:17 AM, herbs at wideopenwest.com (Herbert Schulz) wrote:
>
>> First, as Peter Dybala said, that can't be done in either an engine
>> file or the source. The best thing is to write a single engine that
>> does the searching (using grep?) and executes the correct commands
>> depending upon the search results.
>
> This response seems contradictory to me perhaps because I may have  
> a faulty understanding of "engine" or there are some details missing.
>
> I had though an "engine" file was simply a script that invoked a  
> specific TeX binary. For example, one of the files I have in the in  
> the Engines folder contains the following
[snip]
>
> It seems like it should not be difficult to implement if then else  
> clauses to invoke different binaries here based on whatever  
> criteria was of interest to an user.
>
> What am I missing?

You  are not missing anything. What Peter and Herb meant was that one  
needs to have what you describe: A single engine file that uses the  
shell's if then else clauses, along with some grep on the source file  
perhaps, to decide which binary and whatever other settings to use.  
The first sentence that you quoted refers to the "multiple engines"  
approach that the OP was looking for, i.e. somehow indicating a  
different engine to be run in each case, and Herb was saying that  
this cannot be done, neither in a "master engine file" nor in the TeX  
file itself. This was in response to the OP's question:
			"Must I define this switch in the engine file or in the tex file?"

Though come to think of it, I don't see why a "master" engine file  
couldn't be calling other engine files, since they are all basically  
shell scripts. Then again, I don't use TeXShop so I don't know ;).

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College





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