using make to create plots?

[Stuart Colley <src(at)star.ucl.ac.uk>]

hi,

I'm using make to create a LaTeX document that contains .eps files created
by IDL.  What I'd like to do is have a suffix rule that checks to see if
the .sav file (which contains the plot I created with IDL) is newer than
the .eps that will be included in the document.  If the .sav file is newer
than the .eps file then I'd like to create a new .eps from the .sav file
using a routine I wrote:

sav2ps, 'filename.sav', /eps

The question is, can IDL be used to execute just one command, such as the
one above is a suffix rule, e.g the one below:

.SUFFIXES : .eps .sav
.sav.eps :
	idl sav2ps, 'filename.sav', /eps

Or would I have to create a .pro file with the relevant commands?  And
could the make's $< macro be used to pass the filename - I have a feeling
it couldn't.

cheers,
S