Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!mdeck From: mdeck@acsu.buffalo.edu (Mary Deck) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: system identification Message-ID: <41271@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> Date: 17 Oct 90 18:10:19 GMT References: <40309@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> Sender: news@acsu.Buffalo.EDU Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci Lines: 44 Nntp-Posting-Host: sybil.cs.buffalo.edu In article spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) writes: >In article <40309@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> mdeck@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Mary Deck) writes: >[about system identification in TeX] >I `support' TeX on various systems, and one solution I adopt for a >similar problem is to define my own symbol (a TeX counter), set the >value of that when I build a .fmt file, and then check its value in >style files with a case statement. ...Except that then I have to either own a copy of the format on each system, or convince the powers that be that this is worth changing the formats for. Neither is likely. >a hackier way would be to check for the existence of the VMS name and >if that failed, try the unix one..... I thought of that, but I don't like it, either... >so far as I know there is no generic answer, but it is perfectly >permissible to build something into the format file. but please test >in the style file to see if your trap is defined at all! then other >people can use your files too..... I don't think anyone else will use my files, but I will check. What I'm going to do (when I get around to it) is make a file 'system.tex' which contains lines like this: \let\VMSTeX\relax Then, in my (La)TeX document, after including 'system.tex', I can say \ifx\VMSTeX\relax % VMS-specific stuff \fi With similar definitions for other systems, this should do just what I need it to do. And it requires only trivial amounts of disk space, and doesn't involve changing any system files. Thanks for all suggestions, especially Raymond Chen (raymond@math.berkely.edu), who suggested this. ....Mary --- Mary M. Deck, Student Assistant, User Services University Computing Services, State University of New York at Buffalo mdeck@cs.buffalo.edu [Unix] acsgmmd@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu [VAX/VMS]