[tex-live] TeXshop and other GUIs: space in text box data

Nelson H. F. Beebe beebe at math.utah.edu
Thu Sep 19 19:41:22 CEST 2013


I just had a user come in with a Mac OS X laptop where TeXshop would
complain something like 'cannot find /usr/texbin/pdflatex' when the
Typeset button was pressed.

I went into the TeXshop preferences and eyeballed the Engine panel,
and it looked like there was a bit of extra space in front of
"/usr/texbin" in the search path box.  I rubbed out that space, and
now TeXshop successfully calls pdftex and all is well.  The user told
me that he had cut and paste that path when he tried changing engines.

So, the question for GUI interface programmers on this list is: should
the GUI trim leading and trailing space in strings entered into text
boxes?  I rather think that it should, or if it does not, at least it
should issue a prominent warning.

I just tried a URL with leading and trailing space in firefox, and it
trimmed them and found the Web site without complaint.  So, there is
precedence in at least one widely-used GUI program for blank trimming.

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