[OS X TeX] The `%!TEX TSprogram = TeXify' line used in TeXShop ...

[Herbert Schulz]

On Feb 13, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Jung-Tsung Shen wrote:

> I was submitting a manuscript to http://arxiv.org/ earlier today. The
> files were one main tex file and three eps figures. My main tex file
> contained the following two lines at the very beginning:
>
> %!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
> %!TEX TSprogram = TeXify
>
> All the files passed the submission check and could be processed
> without problems. (The system declines the submission if there's any
> problems in processing the tex files) But when I tried to view the
> generated PDF file, the system kept triggering the remote server and
> simply failed to generate it. While I was trying to see where it went
> wrong (I thought it's due to figures since I had to compress them a
> lot to meet the file size requirement), I got a message from arXiv's
> very helpful administrator, saying
>
> "Your main LaTeX source file contained a PostScript %! line, which was
> misinterpreted by our AutoTeX engine.  We have removed this line from
> your LaTeX file, and your submission now correctly generates a PDF
> file."
>
> I also submitted the same paper, with the above two lines, to one
> journal of APS (Americal Physical Society) and it went through and
> generated PDF without any problem.
>
> Except manually removing the lines, is there any other way to make the
> tex file mostly portable? [The answer probably is not ...]
>
> Thanks.
>
> JT


Unfortunately some systems assume the %! is the start of a postscript  
file (even though the standard should be %!PS. Ti fix that simply add  
another % to the front of those lines; TeXShop doesn't care and it  
keeps those dumb programs happy too.

%%!TEX TS-program = Texify
%%!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode

and notice the TS-program rather than TSprogram.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)