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From: rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX index program available
Message-ID: <12953@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 Dec 89 01:48:36 GMT
References: <THEWALT.89Dec8110634@RITZ.ce.cmu.edu> <3478@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <21186@mimsy.umd.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 21

In article <21186@mimsy.umd.edu>, chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
> There is something, though, that would be very useful to have in TeX
> that would take little space, add a great deal of power, and could be
> done on most systems (albeit in a system-dependent fashion):  TeX
> should be able to run a subprocess.

This is done on several implementations of TeX, including IBM/CMS and
Amiga.  The syntax is simply

\write18{makeindex \jobname}

for instance; you can precede it with \immediate if you want.  Thus,
you can do almost anything . . .  (It might not be 18 on all machines.)
The nice thing about this format is, if the extension isn't supported
at a particular machine, at least you can see on the screen and in the
log file the command that was supposed to be run.

On the Amiga, it can invoke an interactive ARexx script that can make
almost anything possible . . .

-tom