RE: [Axiom-developer] build-improvements and latex

[Page, Bill]

Oh, so much email over such a simple thing ... :-(

On Wednesday, November 08, 2006 6:29 AM Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
> ...
> Bill Page wrote: 
> >    It would be very strange to see
> > 
> >      latex name.tex --> name.tex.dvi
> >      dvipdfm name.tex.dvi --> name.tex.dvi.pdf
> > 
> >    wouldn't it?
> 
> Of course.
> 
> > 2) File names with more than one . are may not be portable to
> >    non-linux file systems - although the only ones I can think of
> >    are old and unlikely candidates for Axiom.
> 
> That is an argument. But perhaps for all those of us who are not so 
> familiar with non-Linux, it would be more helpful to say which systems

> these are. The only system I know would be DOS. But then forget about 
> the .pamphlet extension. You only have 3 characters. ;-)
> 
> Anything else that cannot handle 2 dots or long filenames?
>

I think older CDrom formats also had this sort of limitation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660

and still cause some trouble in rare cases with very long file
names.

 
> > 3) Files with unnecessarily long names are more awkward to use.
> 
> > Ok I admit that reasons 2) and 3) are not very strong reasons...
> 
> Not even 1) is a reason. Why do you believe one can say
> 
> make dvi
> 
> in ALLPROSE and then say
> 
> xdvi myalps.dvi
> 
> to get the whole documentation although I have the convention
> notangle removes .nw
> noweave adds .tex  (result is .nw.tex)
> ?
>

Good question. If the rule is "add .tex" then the result is

  latex myalps.nw.tex --> myalps.nw.dvi

not myalps.dvi. You must be doing something more to hide the .nw.

Your suggestion would require that we use awkwqard names like

  xdvi axiom.sty.pamphlet.dvi

No?

> There will never be generated anything else than one dvi file.
> And I don't understand, why people care so much about the names
> of intermediate files. You can remove .nw.tex files and no harm 
> is done. If make would already remove them, one would not even
> see what strange things are done under the hat.

I don't think anyone is that worried about internal file names,
but this discussion is about making the makefiles "simpler" and
more obvious, so we do care what goes on under the hat, right?
Using a file name for dvi files that retains the original
.pamphlet extension is not so obvious to me.

> But that naming scheme simplifies the understanding of the 
> system (only in my opinion, of course). One doesn't have to
> rename axiom.sty.pamphlet to axiom-sty.pamphlet.

In my opinion it is only an accident that axiom.sty.pamphlet
has this name and contains only one root chunk. In general this
is not the case.

> 
> So the only reason I see not to just add ".tex" would be portability. 
> But which are systems we want to build Axiom on that cannot 
> handle two dots?
> 

I would guess: none.

Regards,
Bill Page.