External scripts when using TeXShop

Question

As I wrote in this answer to my question, I decided to use a shell script in order to concatenate the bunch of .tex files and compile them. However, this way, when ever I want to compile the whole glossary, I have to switch to the terminal and run the script there, from the right directory, i.e. the glossary's directory.

I'm using TeXShop on a mac OSX, and I want to know is there a way to set a short cut in TeXShop that will invoke the script?

Thanks, Dror.

Answer 1

Look in the TeXShop Macro Editor—you'll see it can be used for code snippets or scripts. The first item in the Macro menu is "AppleScripts," where you can see some examples, including some that just wrap around a shell script or command. So something like this should work:

--AppleScript
-- #FILEPATH# in the text will be replaced by the path of the document

do shell script "cd #FILEPATH# && source generateGlossary.sh"

The first line tells TeXShop that this macro should be run as a script. The second line is just an AppleScript comment. The third line does the work.

Macros can be bound to command key combinations as well.

Answer 2

Running this sort of thing is probably better done using TeXShop's "engines" instead of calling an applescript from the Macro Editor.

If you look in your ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines folder (especially the Inactive folder) you can see various examples of such engines. The engine files themselves are just shell scripts (so they need to have the executable bit set) Once you've got the script working you can put it in the Engines folder and it will appear in the pulldown menu beside the Typeset button on any document window.

It's very possible that the script you want to run already exists (you mention glossaries). Have your looked at the LaTeXmk engine for TeXShop?

The LaTeXmk script (various versions are found in the Inactive folder; just drag them to the Engines folder and restart TeXShop to activate them.) runs all of the required numbers of latex/bibtex/mkindex/makeglossaries etc. so that everything in your document is complete. It knows about most of the major packages' extra .aux-type files, and is quite smart. The LaTeXmk engine is maintained by Herb Schulz and the latest version can be obtained from his web page.

One thing to watch out for when running scripts from within an application is that the path and environment variables set inside the application are not identical to the path and environment variables you may have set in you bash .profile or csh .cshrc file.