Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Scripsit Vincent Danjean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> Package name : latex-compile >> Description : easy compiling of complexe (and simple) LaTeX documents >> This package provides several tools that aim to simplify the >> compilation of LaTeX documents : > > I'm marginally unhappy with the word "compile" here.
Me too, but it's frequently used in this context, and I don't know a good alternative. > LaTeX programs > are not being _compiled_; they are being _executed_ Hm, well, on the other hand it's the pdftex binary that is executed and reads a file (a couple of them, actually) [1]. Would you say that when you say "gv paper.ps", paper is executed? "Interpret" is clearly a correcter word for what happens, but on the other hand *nobody* uses it for (La)TeX stuff. Nobody uses "execute" for (La)TeX documents, either. > and their output > are page descriptions. (Plus screen output, plus a log file, plus other files. However, the log file contains also information that doesn't have anything to do with the LaTeX document (e.g. it tells you which engine was used, like pdfTeX or Knuth's TeX, or e-TeX).) As I said, I'm not happy with "compile", but "execute" or "interpret" are not at all better. "Process" is also frequently used, but OTOH this is pretty unspecific and can mean anything, so I wouldn't recommend this. Regards, Frank [1] It's possible to "set up" a TeX system that, when invoked as "latex <something>[.tex]", always creates a PDF file that prints the text "You may not use LaTeX", nothing else, and when invoked as "pdflatex <something>[.tex]", prints a DVI file with that content, irrespective of the content of <something>.tex. -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
