On Sat, 28 Aug 2021 09:47:03 +0200 Achim Zeileis <achim.zeil...@uibk.ac.at> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Aug 2021, Rolf Turner wrote: > > > I have found that tools::texi2pf() ignores changes to the *.bib file > > unless the *.bbl file is removed prior to re-running > > tools::texi2pdf(). > > This is how texi2pdf (or actually texi2dvi) from texinfo behaves. > This is likely what tools::texi2pdf calles in your setup anyway. In > short, texi2dvi considers the .bbl as input files to the .tex and > does not remove them if they are available prior to calling texi2dvi. > > Alternatives: > > (1) You can always re-run everything. Then simply start with a clean > directory and always use tools::texi2pdf(..., clean = TRUE). This > cleans up all the files it has produced (except the .pdf). But it > will preserve files left in the directory from previous runs. > > (2) You can detect upstream changes, e.g., based on timestamps etc. > Then the traditional approach would be to use a Makefile. > > Best, > Z Thanks. I guess you're saying that it's a feature, not a bug. :-) Well it's a feature that I intensely dislike, but that cuts no ice I'm sure, and I'll just have to cope with it. I can easily build a local function that will remove *.bbl before invoking tools::texi2pdf(), and use that, rather than calling tools::texi2pdf() directly. However I *really* believe that this is a bad feature, and is a Trap For Young Players. Hardly anyone knows what a *.bbl is or is for. Users would expect that changing the *.bib file would change the reference list in the output. (I.e. that texi2pdf() would re-run bibtex "under the bonnet", as the user would do if processing from the OS command line rather than applying texi2pdf() from R.) I wonder how many papers in the R Journal have errors in their reference lists due to the fact that authors corrected the *.bib file, reprocessed using texi2pdf() and did not notice that the error they corrected had *not* been corrected in the *.pdf output? cheers, Rolf -- Honorary Research Fellow Department of Statistics University of Auckland Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
