[354] in SIPB bug reports
No Deal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Mar 8 01:17:30 1989
From: amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 89 21:51:13 EST
To: wesommer@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bjaspan@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Bill Sommerfeld's message of Tue, 7 Mar 89 21:35:07 EST <8903080235.AA00467@ra.mit.edu>
OK, I agree to the extent that TeX should look for foo, then foo.tex iff
it could not find foo.
What PC-DOS has to do with this is standardization. I want the same results,
to the extent possible, on any machine, running any lowest-level user
interface (and if that's touching two wires together, or if it's reading
my psi waves, that's what I mean).
There are two issues here: The assumption of .tex (which, I think we all
agree, is broken), and the selection of \jobname (which is where we all
differ).
As I've stated twice before, the definition of \jobname is simple:
All characters up to but not including the first period.
TeX makes a point of not parsing any characters before whitespace.
(Yes, this means that if you mv foo.tex "this filename has spaces.tex"
you will lose.) It really truly makes an effort of getting the most
portable, most consistant value for \jobname that it can.
And if you don't like it, you can always set up an alias to mv your
dvi files to a "safe" name. That's where UNIX or even PC-DOS shows
its strength --- and the portability and consistancy of TeX does,
too.
- Rhu
