[l2h] latex2html bug report when handling TEXINPUTS.

[Ross Moore]

Hi Erling,

On 23/04/2004, at 10:09 PM, Erling D. Andersen wrote:

> Hi
> I define
>
> set TEXINPUTS=c:\something..
>
> and it seems latex2html does not feed it properly to texpand.

No; it's not supposed to.
You are expected to supply a Perl definition to $TEXINPUTS
within a local .latex2html-init  file.

>
> If you change the code from
>
>         L2hos->syswait("$TEXEXPAND $dbg -auto_exclude $unseg"
>                  . "-save_styles $DESTDIR$dd$TMP_${dd}styles "
>                  . ($TEXINPUTS ? "-texinputs $TEXINPUTS " : '' )
>                  . (($VERBOSITY >2) ? "-verbose " : '' )
>                  . "-out $DESTDIR$dd$TMP_$dd$FILE "
>                  . "$texfilepath$dd$FILE.$EXT")
>             && die " texexpand  failed: $!\n";
>
> to
>
>         $MYTEXINPUTS = $ENV{'TEXINPUTS'};

Why not set  $TEXINPUTS = ".:$ENV{'TEXINPUTS'}";  ...

>
>         L2hos->syswait("$TEXEXPAND $dbg -auto_exclude $unseg"
>                  . "-save_styles $DESTDIR$dd$TMP_${dd}styles "
>                  . ($MYTEXINPUTS ? "-texinputs $MYTEXINPUTS " : '' )

  ... and not edit this latter line at all ?


>                  . (($VERBOSITY >2) ? "-verbose " : '' )
>                  . "-out $DESTDIR$dd$TMP_$dd$FILE "
>                  . "$texfilepath$dd$FILE.$EXT")
>             && die " texexpand  failed: $!\n";
>
>
> then things works very well.
>
> I think the problem is
>
> $TEXINPUTS
>
> only includes the current directory.
>
> Is my bug report correct or have I misunderstood something?

Yes, you have misunderstood that LaTeX2HTML is *not* based
upon a TeX engine, but implements the translation of LaTeX
coding in a quite different way. Much TeX coding cannot
be translated sensibly by LaTeX2HTML.
     (more explanations below.)

>
> If you want to verify the bug then TEXINPUTS to something.
> Do
>
> latex2html -debug ...
>
> Verify that texpand does not get the right -texinputs.

What you are missing is that the environment variable
   TEXINPUTS  is usually used for TeX \input  files and packages,
most of which cannot be interpreted by LaTeX2HTML, since they
are designed for layout of material on a static paper page.
Most packages and Plain-TeX \input files will just cause errors
in the high-level LaTeX-based processing performed by LaTeX2HTML.

Furthermore, since TEXINPUTS is frequently set to include the
*whole* texmf/ tree, including documentation files, it is
actually quite easy to get completely unrelated files \input
into a LaTeX2HTML job, causing all sorts of mayhem --- and the
user will be quite unaware of why material from such a file
has managed to get into his/her HTML pages.
(Consider how many files named  test.tex, example.tex, ex1.tex,
  letter.tex, etc.  are located within your texmf/ tree.
These are then candidates to be included accidentally.)


In short, if you have a sensibly-defined  TEXINPUTS  environment
variable, necessary for a particular LaTeX job, then you should
be prepared to define a similar $TEXINPUTS Perl variable for that
job.  (There are too many TeX installations out there with
badly-defined  TEXINPUTS  env variables to have $TEXINPUTS
inherited from it by default.)



>
> Erling
>
> PS. I would prefer a LOT that
>
> latex2html -texinputs whateverpath .....
>
> was possible.
>

It's fine for experienced users of LaTeX2HTML to set this up
for themselves, but it is *not* fine for this to be the
default behaviour imposed by simply installing the software.


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore


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Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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