[XeTeX] Proposal : that TeX engines generating PDF directly should be able to close the output file without terminating.

[Philip Taylor]

I am frequently in the situation where I routinely need to run two instances of XeTeX in immediate succession — the first to generate an intermediate PDF file, the second to read that file as input, massage it, and then output a second PDF file derived from the first.  As much of my work is data-driven, I normally "compile" the data file in TeXworks, with the first TeX file nominated as the root file in the pragmats at the top of the data file, as in : [File: Hoi-An TA Menu.xlsx.tex] % !TeX Program=XeTeX % !TeX Root=Hoi-An TA menu (separate pages).tex As a second step, I then have to select a different TeX file ("Hoi-An TA menu (combine pages).tex") as the current file and compile that. If XeTeX could be instructed to close its current PDF file and then create a new one (obviously with a different-but-derived name), the entire task could be accomplished with a single TeX file (plus data file) rather than requiring two separate TeX files (plus data file) as at present. Would there be any support for a proposal to extend the PDF-generating family of TeX-derived engines to support this feature ? Philip Taylor