[Templates] Latex filter enhancements

[Andrew Ford]

I am just delving into Template::Filters to add an enhancement to the 
latex/pdf filter, namely to rerun latex/pdflatex if there are undefined 
references after the first run.  My specific requirement is when 
generating a PDF version of a price list on the fly I want the footers 
to say "Page n of m", which can easily be done with the latex "lastpage" 
package, but which requires two runs of latex to resolve the last page 
reference, but also using the supertabular package to typeset multi-page 
tables requires multiple runs.  Latex and TT make a good combination -- 
a guy at the 2000 TeX User Group conference gave a talk about his 
employer, an insurance company, using latex from CGI scripts to generate 
customized insurance policies as PDF documents -- and they weren't even 
using a proper templating system.

The latex filter is currently quite basic, and could be enhanced with 
all sorts of bells and whistle options, for example:

* set the TEXINPUTS environment variable to include the directory the 
template was found in, so that file inclusion (in latex) picks up files 
in that directory (the template is copied to a temporary directory and 
latex is run in that directory so that temporary files can be cleaned up 
after the template has been filtered).

* specify the auxilliary programs to be run on the template (e.g. 
makeindex, bibtex, etc) and the order they should be run in (for a book 
or manual this may be: "latex, latex, bibtex, makeindex, latex, latex" 
with latex run twice at the start to resolve forward references and 
twice after bibtex and makeindex in order to firstly get the page 
numbers of the bibliography and index into the .aux file and secondly to 
get those page numbers into the table of contents).

I had thought to use named parameters to the filter for these options, 
perhaps:

"maxruns" for the maximum number of runs of latex (with a default of 
either 1 or 2 -- 1 is current behaviour, 2 would allow forward 
references to be resolved and if there were no forward references then 
latex would only run once anyway)

"commands" for a list of commands to be run on the templates as 
illustrated above

"extradirs" to specify a list of directories to be prepended to 
TEXINPUTS (with relative paths being taken as relative to the directory 
of the template)

"includes" to specify files to be copied to the temporary directory, 
such  as images or files to be \include{}'ed into the latex template.

"tmpdir" to specify a 'temporary' directory for debugging -- this would 
not be deleted by tt2 after processing the template, so that one could 
go in and sort out latex problems

I am still at the planning stage for this and would welcome comments and 
suggestions.

Andrew
--
Andrew Ford,  Director    Pauntley Prints / Ford & Mason Ltd
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   South Wing Compton House 
pauntley-prints.co.uk     Compton Green, Redmarley  Tel: +44 1531 829900
ford-mason.co.uk          Gloucester GL19 3JB       Fax: +44 1531 829901
refcards.com/cronolog.org Great Britain          Mobile: +44 7785 258278

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