vjcarey@SPHUNIX.SPH.JHU.EDU ("Vincent J. Carey") (04/05/91)
Hello. Previously I posed a question about the possibility of setting specific file-identification information in the footer of a LaTeX document. One reader pointed out the \jobname command, which gets the name on which LaTeX was invoked, and another reader sent the fancyheadings package to help me set a footer. These have been very helpful points, but it seems the nature of my question was not very clear. I really want to be able to have documents be "self-identifying" in their printed form. The printed result should -- optionally, of course -- contain a footer (or some other token) specifying the hostname and absolute pathname of the .tex file from which the print was derived. This way, when hardcopy of a document crosses my desk and needs changes, I will be better equipped to find the source and make the changes. I have a very inelegant way of doing this, which employs a shell script which obtains values of environment variables and seds the latex source to insert the information I need. I am not a fluent shell programmer, so the process involves creation of a temporary file, and error recovery is quite primitive. Furthermore, my process relies upon the existence of some comments in the preamble which are targets for sed replacement. My general question is: can one set values of LaTeX variables to values of environment variables obtained at time of LaTeX invocation? If anyone else has made progress on the problem of making latex output precisely self-identifying, I would appreciate knowing about it. P.S. I will send a copy of my shell-script to any interested party within mailing distance, but I do not feel it is ready for general distribution. Furthermore, I hope it can be supplanted by a native method. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Vincent J. Carey Department of Biostatistics Johns Hopkins School of Public Health vjcarey@sphunix.sph.jhu.edu