[OS X TeX] TeXShop features I would like to correct (or have corrected)

[Tom Koornwinder]

On 06-11-2007 at 11:40 Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 6 nov. 07 a 11:17, Tom Koornwinder a ecrit : 
>  
> > On 05-11-2007 at 08:34 Josep M. Font wrote: 
> > 
> >> I would say this is normal TeX(Shop) behaviour, depending on the 
> >> point at which the previous TeX run was aborted. Anyway, 
> >> trashing .aux files will (almost) never hurt. 
> > 
> > I asked several colleagues who are regularly working in LaTeX on other 
> > platforms than Mac OS X, so certainly not in TeXShop. They had never 
> > experienced this behaviour. 
>  
> That's the way TeX (and LaTeX) are designed: you are supposed to end   
> up a TeX run properly, by either (in the Console window) pressing "x"   
> or "e" then return to abort, or pressing "s" or "r" or "q" to force   
> the run to proceed until the end. For the exact effect of each of   
> these letters, see pp. 31-32 of the TeXbook. 

Thanks to Bruno Voisin, Axel E. Retif and Peter Dyballa for explanations
and suggestions. I am now convinced that the phenomenon is not a bug
in TeXShop, but that it occurs because TeXShop makes it so easy to proceed
as Bruno describes:

> That's the only way to get LaTeX to produce a well-formed .aux file    
> before stopping. If, as I do most of the time, when LaTeX stops for an    
> error, you just go back to the edit window and correct the error then    
> press Cmd-T to start a new run, LaTeX will start its new run by    
> reading the malformed .aux file created during the abruptly    
> interrupted preceding run, and fun will begin.  

So I will from now on avoid this by typing in the console window "x"
followed by Return after an error (at least for latex files which have
become so long that the "unfinished line" phenomenon in the .aux file
starts occurring).

			Tom Koornwinder

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