Re: [OS X TeX] Non–Recovery from Error

[Messerschmitt David]

<<snip>>

> 
> There are innumerable problems that can cause any of the files produced by TeX to fail when there is a major error in compilation. And the failure can occur at multiple points (e.g., in the bibtex run, a makeindex run, etc.). The answer is that when you get error with runaway arguments it could also just be a problem in a macro that was defined.
> 

I find myself agreeing with you and Peter, and at the same time disagreeing.

It is true that there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and latexmk has no way of knowing what.
This need and should not be the case, but so be it. Obviously this is the result of years of incremental
development to an architectural plan that has its limitations. But the system also has tremendous
compensatory strengths, which is why we are all using it.

What I would do in this circumstance is ask how we can make the system as friendly as possible
for the most common problems, without causing anomalous behavior in the other cases. The normal mode
in my experience is a formatting that runs into problems because of some change the user made, 
but the user recognizes what the problem is and immediately repairs it in the source files. 
(Obviously it is related to something the user just did, which narrows it down dramatically especially
if formattings are done often.)

Latexmk could deal with this circumstance in a way that makes it transparent to the user.
If a formatting terminates abnormally, and subsequently the source files have changed, it would be
very reasonable for latexmk to automatically delete .aux files and then format twice.
In all cases where the user has correctly repaired the problem that caused the anomaly in the
first place, this should recover completely and avoid the user having to run three or four
commands manually. In any other cases (which I would submit are must less frequent) this 
should do no harm other than the time it takes to do the two formattings.

This is a matter of design philosophy for a software system. I have my strong opinions on this.
To me it is unreasonable to just say that the user should not make mistakes.
Rather, the design goal should be to recover from user mistakes transparently
in those cases where the user correctly repairs the mistake he has made.

-dave


David Messerschmitt
Roger Strauch Professor Emeritus
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California at Berkeley
      and
Visiting Researcher
SETI Institute