[tex-live] external program calls

[Michael Niedermair]

Hi,

> I have always used the <exec> task. You can look into its source to
> find how it is done. Previously I worked on OS/2, now I work on Linux,
> some OS/2 code in <exec> was supplied by me. I have no programming
> experience with Windows.

the <exec>-task use intern the class Execute. In my task I use the same 
class. If I use the <exec> task, I get the same problem with w7.

A litle sample:

<ifnewer srcdir="src/d2t"
	destdir="${target.dir}"
	srcextname=".*\.d2t$"
	verbose="true"
	destextname="pdf"
	threadsperprocessor="2"
	>
	<d2t2pdf>
	\documentclass[12pt]{article}
	\usepackage{libertine}
	\usepackage{xcolor}
	\usepackage{pst-all,pst-grad}
	\usepackage[a0paper]{geometry}
	\pagestyle{empty}
	\begin{document}%
         </d2t2pdf>
	<pdfcrop />
	<removeother othernames="pdf" />
</ifnewer>

The task ifnewer call for each file in the srcdir the inner tasks, if 
the source file is newer as the destination file. The task start for 
each prozessor two threads parallel. The parameters for the inner task 
are set automatically.
The task d2t2pdf call first the program dot2tex, take the created tex 
file and put the shown tex code around the little file. After this, the 
task call xelatex  oder with mode="latex", latex, dvips, ps2pdf.
The task pdfcrop remove all white margin in the pdf (call pdfcrop).
The task removeother delete all files in the target directory with the 
same basename and with an other extensions as shown, e.g. basename.tex 
basename.log, basename.aux, basename.dvi, basename.ps, ...

If I use a filesystem with write cache and a temporary write cache time 
of 30 seconds, the litle files, which delete removeother, are not stored 
on the disk. So I have a fast system which use all cpu cores to create 
e.g. pictures with tex source.

By
Michael