[Templates] Refactoring Template-Latex

[Andrew Ford]

Since my last message I have been refactoring Template-Latex. 

I have created a new module, LaTeX::Driver, which should be hitting CPAN
around now.  It handles the running of latex, bibtex and makeindex on a
single document in an existing directory, ensuring that the programs get
re-run until all undefined references are satisfied and the formatting
of the document (i.e. the pagination) stabilizes.

Template-Latex used to copy the source text to a temporary file in a
temporary directory and then run latex, copy the formatted file out and
delete the temporary directory.  Now the temporary directory and file
will be set up and LaTeX::Driver invoked to do the processing and then
the formatted file copied out.  It may not sound like much of a change,
but running the various latex-related programs is somewhat complicated,
especially when it was intertwined with the rest of the logic, so a
separation makes everything clearer, and makes the driver logic
available for reuse elsewhere.

I now plan to split Template-Latex into two distributions:
Template-Plugin-Latex (Template::Plugin::Latex) and Template-Latex
(Template::Latex).  The latter module, Template::Latex, is, to quote the
man page, "a wrapper of convenience around the Template module".  It
essentially provides a version of Template with the latex filter
pre-loaded.  I think that this module should be deprecated, and I intend
to rewrite the two modules such that Template::Latex uses
Template::Plugin::Latex rather than the other way round.  I will
reorganize the documentation so that the main source is the plugin
module's man page and the Template::Latex module will mainly refer to that.

I got the Template-Latex distribution more or less working before I got
diverted into factoring out the LaTeX::Driver code, but it shouldn't
take very long to reorganize the rest of the code along the lines I've
outlined.

Question for the svn.tt2.org repository maintainer: can I have a
separate repository for Template-Plugin-Latex (preferably initialized
with a copy of the content of the Template-Latex repository)?

If anyone has any comments on this, please do contact me.  Otherwise
there should be a shiny new Latex plugin ready quite soon now, with a
few new features.

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Ford,  Director    Pauntley Prints / Ford & Mason Ltd            
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