How SEP connects a TeX button to make rule
SEP's TeX
builds the framework that connect TeX to a make rule.
TeX and the button
It all starts with an button in your tex document: how did you get a
button? You used an figure macro such as activeplot. These macros
and their functionality are defined in
/usr/local/share/TEX/teTeX/texmf/tex/latex/sep2e/sepplot.tex
Tex knows to look for macro definitions there (we told it to when
installing it)
When you press that figure button, tex triggers accordingly to the
the button macro a tex "syscall" with invoking following command:
figname.menu
except if you have defined a "nomenu" variable in your tex file:
In this case tex invokes
figname.idoc
SEP.action.rules
The SEP.action.rules take it from there.
In the case of figname.menu, they set a group of status
flags according to the existence of a figname.warning or figname.?.save
file. Then they invoke an xtpanel which is called xtpanel.builder
using different xtpanel variables
depending on its status flags (e.g. DNOREBUILD, CANT_INTERACT)
Xtpanel.builder
xtpanel.builder knows how to make an x-window menu for the user
interaction. xtpanel knows where to find it since at compilation time
we tell xtpanel to check
/usr/local/lib/X11/xtpanel/builder.xtpanel
Before the menu is started, the C-preprocessor sets the xtpanel according
to the different status flags. The x-window menu always has a quit
button, but probably everything else is governed by the status flag
definitions.
the xtpanel builder builds an interactive menu: when pressing any of
its buttons it will issue the command spedified for this button. The
commands are usually calls to the local Makefile.
Makefile
what happens here is the author's responsibility: the commands
the xtpanel menu issues are usually defaulted in the SEP.idoc.rules.
Therefore, beaware if you do not anything the SEP.idoc.rules probably
will.