[task #15984] attachfile in LaTeX - pdflatex or lualatex only

[Boud Roukema]

URL:
  <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15984>

                 Summary: attachfile in LaTeX - pdflatex or lualatex only
                 Project: Maneage
            Submitted by: boud
            Submitted on: Sun 13 Jun 2021 02:59:50 PM UTC
         Should Start On: Sun 13 Jun 2021 12:00:00 AM UTC
   Should be Finished on: Sun 13 Jun 2021 12:00:00 AM UTC
                Category: Paper
                Priority: 1 - Later
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

Following a suggestion by Resist1984 [1], it might be interesting at the pdf
production stage to use the LaTeX package _attachfile_ [2].

I think this could be interesting for some projects, although I'm not
convinced that it's currently optimal for reproducibility and longevity.

The documentation [3] currently says that _attachfile_ won't work with
latex+dvips+ps2pdf, which is needed for working with postscript figure files,
that are preferred by ArXiv [4] for longevity as a plain-text format.

I tried viewing the result of an input file such as

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{attachfile}
\begin{document}
\huge Demonstrate the use of {\tt attachfile}.
\attachfile{dummy.tex}
\end{document}

compiled with _pdflatex_ .

'xpdf' doesn't supporting clicking on the attachment.

'evince' 3.22.1 shows a box and displays no content with
\attachfile{dummy.tex}, but launches _libreoffice_ with
\attachfile{dummy.txt}. Launching different viewers for attachments is
presumably a question of the OS, user configuration, and a bit of elementary
hacking.

I think the idea is worth exploring, but currently removes one step of
longevity (allowing postscript figure sources) and would require a bit of
hacking for the 'attachment' to give the user options such as 'save to
disk/find-file in emacs'.


[1] https://social.privacytools.io/@resist1984/106403512774826889

[2] https://ctan.org/pkg/attachfile?lang=en

[3] http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/attachfile.pdf

[4] https://arxiv.org/help/faq/whytex





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