[OS X TeX] pdftex error

[Herb Schulz]

On 3/19/04 3:47 AM, "Lorant Olasz" <lorant at kth.se> wrote:

> ...
> Thanks, running pdflatex works. The question is why pdftex doesn't?
> 
Howdy,

Glad it worked for you.

>
> And, yes, a space somehow slipped in between [10pt] and {article} in my
> original mail, but it's not there in my tex doc.
>

The space makes no difference since spaces get gobbled up after a command
name made up of ordinary characters.

>> 
>> 
>>> Also I could not run
>>> pdftex example
>>> as the example.tex file is not found by pfdtex.
>> 
> 
> It seems that the example.tex file for pdftex is not included in the
> i-installer distribution. Explains why it can't be found. Problem still
> stands that when I was experimenting with the fink distribution of
> tetex the file was there but could not be found anyway, although path
> variables seemed to be in order. I suspect that this problem could have
> something to do with pdftex not recognizing commands as well, or?
> 
> Since for now I can produce output with pdflatex, I think I'm done
> experimenting with installations for a while...
> Cheers,
> Lorant
> 

The example file is included at

</Library/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/doc/pdftex/base/>

But you can't compile it there since you don't have write permissions in
that directory. To compile it make a copy of the complete base directory
(there are other files in that directory that are included in example.tex)
by going to 

</usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/doc/pdftex/>

and Option-Dragging it to your desktop. You can then compile the example.tex
file in the copy using pdftex.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)

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