On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 04:00:13AM -0800, Stephen Harris wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Helge Hafting" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Bo Peng" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>; "LyX Devel" <lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 11:48 PM
> Subject: Re: sixth release of LyXWinInstaller
>
>
> >The best fix is to have tex fixed. Second best is lyx providing
> >a workaround. Either approach needs a volunteer - I wonder
> >why nobody seems to want to fix tex though.
> >
> >Helge Hafting
> >
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/msg/6d9312da816b96f7?hl=en&;
> Dan Luecking wrote:
> "TeX has been designed with a basic command \input. Normally it takes a
> space as ending the name. MiKTeX amends this to allow spaces if the
> name is (double) quoted. On the otherhand, some tools used with TeX
> don't like spaces. If a chain of tools is invoked, quotes may get
> stripped, and if even one tool does this (batch files processing can
> do this) then later tools in the chain, even space-aware tools,
> will fail. ...
>
> Microsoft was just showing off when it named system default
> directories with spaces. This already makes it confusing to read
Sure they did a stupid thing, no disagreement there.
> Environmental variables. It forces additional levels of filename
> processing in programs (check for quotes around flenames, add them
> only if not already there. Try to program batch files for all the
> cases.) I'm sure Microsoft is intentionally trying to make it
> hard for Unix-style tools to work in Windows."
>
Yuck - I guess the only way is to extend the script language with
a "normalizepath" function that handles all those cases.
Somehow, I am not sure they were trying to be difficult to unix tools.
I guess they were merely trying to be "user friendly" without
thinking much about the consequences of their actions. Just as
activeX webpages/mail _probably_ wasn't intended to be a way of
spreading viruses. Mac had filenames with spaces, the typical
"ms user" like filenames such as "my stuff" so ms had to enable this.
Then they discovered problems with their own limited command line
tools, and went on to implement quoting badly.
Unix tools don't seem to have such big problems with spaces in paths,
at least the shell escaping works fine when I occationally move
files with spaces around.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> SH: To me, Dan seems like a reliable supplier of information.
> TeX was invented around 1982 and didn't run on Windows.
>
> Leslie Lamport writes:
>
> "In the early 80s, I was planning to write the Great American Concurrency
> Book. I was a TeX user, so I would need a set of macros. I thought that,
> with a little extra effort, I could make my macros usable by others. Don
> Knuth had begun issuing early releases of the current version of TeX, and
> I figured I could write what would become its standard macro package. That
> was the beginning of LaTeX. I was planning to write a user manual, but it
> never occurred to me that anyone would actually pay money for it. In
> 1983,"...
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> SH: Maybe Win95 had paths with spaces. Win98 had paths with spaces
> which needed to be double quoted ("blah blah blah"). WinXP works
> quite well with spaces. My point is that TeX was designed to work the
> way it does, it is not a bug. I don't think TeX would be easy to fix and
> retain compatibility with earlier files. Should the next word of input after
> a space part of the filename/path or when TeX usually begins operation?
>
> I've also read that \includegraphics used to have a problem with paths with
> spaces. Angus says this was fixed and he says bibtex/natbib has not been
> fixed yet. I am not so sure that a Miktex/ProTeXt developer is going to
> see this as a problem/bug with Miktex. I've been reading about the hassle
> of integrating Auctex-preview into Xemacs. The Linux world doesn't take
> responsibility for fixing smaller packages that work with their big package,
> or even go so far as to make it easy to include them.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Helge wrote: > The best fix is to have tex fixed.
>
> SH: Perhaps you can understand my doubt that this is a viable or
> even optimal solution, considering backward compatibility.
>
Depends on to what extent this backward compatibility is needed.
Surely changing \input won't be trivial - but if the rest of
(la)tex is changed to accomodate this at the same time, will
the breakage still be enormous? Latex2e broke third party
packages as well, but that didn't stop it from becoming widespread.
The way I see this, it isn't merely a LyX problem, it could hit
anyone using tex on windows. To me, it looks like something at
least worth considering for anyone wanting to provide (la)tex
for windows.
And if linux someday become a popular desktop os (it already has
a nice userfriendly desktop after all) then users will be using
filenames and directories with spaces because it is natural
to them. Even if the home directory itself never will be a
path with spaces.
> Helge wrote: > Second best is lyx providing a workaround.
>
> SH: Not trying to be contentious, but this seems first best to me.
> And better than the error message idea. How important is fixing this?
> I do think it has some value; I'm not disputing that.
It is certainly the easiest way - such workarounds will generally
be accepted into LyX. I expect getting a patch into (la)tex will
be much harder, which is sad. This space issue isn't that important for
me, but latex certainly has its share of shortcomings anyway. Too much
resistance to change is therefore not a good thing - it may be the
best typesetter around but still not perfect.
Helge Hafting
