MacTeX-2015, TeXShop, Run Macro/Applescript/Bibliography and receive error message: "### FAILED to generate /tmp/altpdflatex.etc"

Question

Novice user here.

Use Mac Os El Capitan, MacTex-2015, TexShop;

Publisher does not support pidflatex and requires figures to be in EPS;

Typeset settings: LaTeX, TeX and DVI;

Bibliography: Natbib.

Question: When I use macro/Applescript/Bibliography I receive the error message below, even though all the citations and figures in the text, and references at the end seem to compile with no problem (sometimes I need to repeat the command.)

However, when publisher's system compiles the files to pdf, citations in the text appears as question marks.

I have some other issues like "Overfull \hbox (48.83583pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 83--83 \OT1/bch/m/n/9 sis. [][][][]| " but I believe they are not related.

In the log file:

log file error: 
Package: infwarerr 2010/04/08 v1.3 Providing info/warning/error messages (HO)

Not sure whether "empty hook" is a sign of error:

\@emptytoks=\toks14
Package atveryend Info: Empty hook `BeforeClearDocument' on input line 664.
Package atveryend Info: Empty hook `AfterLastShipout' on input line 664.
Package atveryend Info: Empty hook `AtVeryEndDocument' on input line 664.
Package atveryend Info: Empty hook `AtVeryVeryEnd' on input line 664.

Answer 1

This problem is caused by a bug in the Applescript that is designed to automate bibliography creation in TeXShop. I suspect that nobody uses it much any more, which is why the problem has gone unnoticed.

A better way to automate bibliography and reference resolution is to use one of the the latexmk engines provided with TeXShop.

If you don't have the latexmk Engine installed, go to ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines/ and move the .engine files from the Inactive/Latexmk folder to the Engines folder.

Restart TeXShop, and the new engines should appear in the pulldown menu beside the Typeset button in the document window. If you're using latex+dvips as your usual engine, then use latexmk instead. You can do this automatically by adding the line:

% !TEX TS-program = latexmk

This will resolve all references, and only runs bibtex when there are changes.