SUMMARY: (LONG) Help with TeX

From: Austin L. Conaty <austin_at_atmos.umd.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 11:03:13 -0500 (EST)

In answer to me plea for more help on TeX, I received many
prompt and useful replies. With just an ounce more
patience I may have succeeded....

Thanks to the following:

 Andrew Sammut <sammut_at_fit.qut.edu.au>
 Randall Winchester <rsw_at_eng.umd.edu>
 Charles_Johnson_at_ncsu.edu
 Andrew Sheaff <sheaff_at_eece.maine.edu>
 Dougal Scott <dwagon_at_aaii.oz.au>
 KASSARJIAN STEVEN J <Steven.Kassarjian_at_Colorado.EDU>
 Olle Eriksson <olle_at_cb.uu.se>
 Joern Wilms <wilms_at_astro.uni-tuebingen.de>
 Szemethy Tivadar <tiv_at_vma.bme.hu>
 Bjorn Braathen <bjorn_at_phys.uit.no>
 Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo_at_lpac.ac.uk>
 Ian Piumarta <piumarta_at_prof.inria.fr>
 nicolis_at_celfi.phys.univ-tours.fr
 Tom Korsmeyer <xmeyer_at_flying-cloud.mit.edu>
 
I had trouble first installing from scratch, and then (when I
had pulled all my hair out) had trouble installing from the
binaries. Here are some important things to start with:

1.) ftp://ftp.shsu.edu/tex-archive/systems/unix/unixtex.ftp
  (or ftp.dante.de, or ftp.tex.ac.uk)

2.) in unixtex.ftp, read and heed the part about
        "Festina lente -- make haste slowly"

Now if you are patient, and read carefully, the answers are all
right there. It is important to get all the pathces, and to read all
the README, INSTALL, and PROBLEMS files, going down as many as 2-3
directories deep. I'll include the fix that solved my "x11.c" problem
which allowed my "from scratch" install to work. I'll also include
some suggestions on how to get the TeX binaries to work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
        M A N Y T H A N K S !!! to all who responded (and reprimanded)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A.) Solutions to the "x11.c" problem
------------------------------------

1.) From: Dougal Scott <dwagon_at_aaii.oz.au>


I've done it a number of times, compiling the sources from scratch. Feel
free to mail me for help.

One thing to note if you are having problems with x11.c (From web2c/PROBLEMS):

* wchar_t is the source of endless problems compiling x11[-Xt].c. See
  xdvi.h in my xdvik distribution for all the details; I'm not going to
  repeat all that here. You can try defining NO_FOIL_X_WCHAR_T.

$$$$$$

2.) From: KASSARJIAN STEVEN J <Steven.Kassarjian_at_Colorado.EDU>

The problem is that the author needed to work around incompatibilities
with the wchar_t type. So she or he redefined it before including the
x11 headers.

This definition apparently is unnecessary for DU 3.2. I attempted to
disable the definition changes with

make -k all NO_FOIL_X_WCHAR_T=1

but this didn't work. (Exactly why I haven't bothered to
plumb---yet.) So, I added this line

#define NO_FOIL_X_WCHAR_T

to the file x11-Xt.c on line 9.

$$$$$$

B.) Solutions to the TeX binaries problem:
------------------------------------------

1.) From: Joern Wilms <wilms_at_astro.uni-tuebingen.de>

Hi,

just install teTeX which is available from all CTAN sites. Includes compiled
binaries, works out of the box (w/o compiling, binaries are included).

 $$$$$$

2.) From: Szemethy Tivadar <tiv_at_vma.bme.hu>

Hello,

Have you tried the teTeX distribution ? It's great and you can install it
just out of the box.
You can get it from sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/comp/tex/teTeX
There is a binary package for OSF if I remember well, but the source
compiles without problems too.

$$$$$$

3.) From: Bjorn Braathen <bjorn_at_phys.uit.no>
Hi,
I installed the teTeX prebuilt package (built by Thomas Esser) on
both Digital Unix and Ultrix and they work just perfect. It's really
easy and if you follow the instructions it should take you about
1 hour to install. You may have some problems with old environment
variables (I did) but they don't pose too big problems.

$$$$$$

4.) From: Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo_at_lpac.ac.uk>

Why don't you do it the easy way and download the DANTE TeX
distribution which uses GNU configure and compiled "out of the box"
for me in less than half an hour. I have everything from plain tex to
latex2e to 209 and all sorts of other wonderful things.

You can find it at CTAN sites in systems/unix/dante

$$$$$$

5.) From: Ian Piumarta <piumarta_at_prof.inria.fr>

Which distribution are you using? I installed the Gutenburg distribution (it
has builtin support for all those weird accents that we're so fond of over
here;-) and have had no problem at all.

Your format file problem arises because TeX has not been told about where you
installed it. It looks (or certainly used to) in /usr/lib/tex/formats by
default. If you installed it elsewhere then you need to say so by setting a
bunch of environment variables.

$$$$$$

6.) From: nicolis_at_celfi.phys.univ-tours.fr

Hi,
TeX complains that it can't find the default format file (to be more
precise I'd guess thqt dvips complains not TeX), because the TEXINPUTS
environment variable isn't properly set. You can do the following:

create a .dvipsrc file in your home directory with the correct paths--
look in the doc for dvips how precisely to do that on your system--e.g. for me
I put

H .:/usr/local/lib/texmf/dvips
P .:/usr/local/lib/texmf/fonts/pk/cx:/usr/users/nicolis/Fonts
T .:/usr/local/lib/texmf/fonts/tfm

$$$$$$

7.)From: Tom Korsmeyer <xmeyer_at_flying-cloud.mit.edu>
 
LaTeX and friends should be a piece of cake if you are running
DU 3.2C. Just go to ftp.shsu.edu and pick up the already made
kit. You will also want the 300dpi fonts. I have installed the
3.2 kit from there with not a single problem, I have also built
the whole thing from scratch under DU3.0, also without a single
problem. I take all the defaults and I put everything where it
is expected to be put.


   
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Received on Tue Dec 19 1995 - 18:17:37 NZDT

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