[tex-live] Bug in TexLive 2005 and 2007? Non-writable aux-file

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 09:09:08AM +0100, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> Hi Phil,
> 
> Philip & Le Khanh wrote:
> >just hit <Return> to signal "try again, please".  Unfortunately
> >PdfTeX doesn't treat <Return> as "try again, please", so one
> >is forced to enter the full PDF file name.  It would be better
> >(IMHO) if <Return> signalled "I think I've fixed it; try again,
> >please".
> 
> I vaguely recall we patched the input file loop query in web2c
> to do just that, because otherwise TeX would attempt to open
> the four-letter name ".tex", and that is almost certainly pointless.

In Phil's case ".pdf".

Ok, this semantics of the empty file name as "retry again"
also makes sense, apart from that it doesn't solve the problem
"how to exit".

But then it should be done the right way:
* The area part must be set to the previous one.
* Also the same extension must be used and must not be replaced
  by the standard extension of the case.

> It should be simple enough to do the same for the PDF file writing loop.

What about both, first retry, then abort? Pseudo code:

    Procedure reset_retry_flag
        if interaction mode = errorstopmode then
            set retry flag
        else
            clear retry flag
        fi

    INIT_FILE_ACCESS:
        reset_retry_flag

    FILE_ACCESS:
        if access file succeeds then
            goto DONE
        else
            goto PROMPT
        fi

    PROMPT:
        save old file name if retry flag is set
        if interaction mode = errorstopmode then
            if retry flag is set then
                explain that empty file name means "retry"
            else
                explain that empty file name means "abort"
            fi
        fi
        prompt for file name
        if file name is not empty then
            reset_retry_flag
            goto FILE_ACCESS
        else
            if retry flag is set then
                clear retry flag
                restore old file name
                goto FILE_ACCESS
            else
                abort job
            fi
        fi

    DONE:

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>