Fri 26 Feb 2016 05:06:36 PM UTC, original submission:
latexmk Sale pitch
The latexmk perl script is an alternative tool to texi2dvi for compiling Texinfo file. There are at least two situations when latexmk may be preferred by the user:
- User is under MSW with MikTeX, he/she does not have any texi2dvi wrapper and does not want to install a bash port, but he/she has some light perl installation, and hence MikTeX latexmk is working.
- Texinfo file comprise material (e.g. figures) that is programmatically generated, ie custom dependencies, and the user prefers defining the custom dependencies using some latexmkrc or latexmk -e '...' statements rather than using a Makefile
Enhancement for latexmk
However, the current implementation of latexmk rc file to handle Texinfo source covers only standard index file extensions. It would be possible, at the cost of significantly more complex rc file to detect the custom extension also. However, it seems to us that a better solution is to align Texinfo index manipulation logging onto LaTeX logging. That enables quite seamlessly latexmk support for all kind of Texinfo indices with a lightweight latexmkrc file.
Credits
As stated in the ChangeLog, John Collins is the author of this patch, I only did the paperword (diff file, ChangeLog entry, bug filing). Once this patch is agreed, and the texinfo-latexmkrc is on CTAN, I can submit another patch to update the Texinfo manual.
Final word
texi2any being also written in Perl, an evolution of it could be to detect automatically which of texi2dvi or latexmk is best on current platform, and to use that one --- that would mean in the case of latexmk
O some argument translation/wrapping
O maybe some need to make latexmk offer its kernel as a perl library (ie it would not only be a standalone script)
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