I am working on a project where a version control identifier is
extracted through the \write18 mechanism and added to the output.
This particular problem may of course be solved in other ways, for
instance extracting the identifier and adding it to the input stream
before the main document or setting the LATEX environment variable.
However, a really easy solution, is to allow texi2dvi to pass the
shell-escape option to the TeX processor, in the same way src-specials
currently is. Thus, it is available more or less as a drop-in
replacement for the "latex" command.
Attached is a patch for such functionality against CVS revision 1.159 of
file texinfo/util/texi2dvi. Consider copyleft to be assigned to the FSF.
Yours sincerely,
Roland Kaufmann
--- texi2dvi.orig 2010-09-06 21:40:58.479818378 +0200
+++ texi2dvi 2010-09-06 22:16:24.169821285 +0200
@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@
recode=false
set_language=
src_specials=
+shell_escape=
latex2html=hevea # or set to tex4ht
textra= # Extra TeX commands to insert in the input file.
txiprereq=19990129 # minimum texinfo.tex version with macro expansion
@@ -331,6 +332,7 @@
--no-line-error do not pass --file-line-error to TeX
-r, --recode call recode before TeX to translate input
--recode-from=ENC recode from ENC to the @documentencoding
+ --shell-escape pass --shell-escape to TeX
--src-specials pass --src-specials to TeX
-t, --command=CMD insert CMD in copy of input file
or --texinfo=CMD multiple values accumulate
@@ -987,6 +989,9 @@
# source, given a sufficiently smart editor), if specified.
test -n "$src_specials" && cmd="$cmd $src_specials"
+ # Tell TeX to allow running external executables
+ test -n "$shell_escape" && cmd="$cmd $shell_escape"
+
# Tell TeX to be batch if requested.
if $batch; then
# \batchmode does not show terminal output at all, so we don't
@@ -1699,6 +1704,7 @@
-r | --recode) recode=true;;
--recode-from) shift; recode=true; recode_from="$1";;
--src-specials) src_specials=--src-specials;;
+ --shell-escape) shell_escape=--shell-escape;;
--tex4ht) latex2html=tex4ht;;
-t | --texinfo | --command ) shift; textra="$textra\\
"`echo "$1" | sed 's/\\\\/\\\\\\\\/g'`;;
