A Word About .TIMESTAMP Files

You may notice that when a L^ATEX source file is compiled, four ``hidden'' time-stamp files are created, e.g., .LATEX-PASS3-TIMESTAMP. These files are necessary to keep track of all the recompiling needed by L<sup>A</sup>TEX, especially when used with BiBTEX. The standard drill is ``latex, bibtex, latex, latex.'' If only the .bib file is touched, we only need ``bibtex, latex, latex,'' and so on. For years, I tried to write webpubdemo/Makefile.tex using no time-stamp files, trying to use generated files such as the .aux and .bbl files in all make dependencies. However, I have recently finally given up on this quest, since it never worked completely right, and the use of time-stamp files has greatly simplified my life. If you can figure out how to get rid of all time-stamp files and get all the dependencies right, please send me a copy of your Makefile!