[l2h] Re: Latex2html Win98 problem

[Ross Moore]

James Lynch writes:

>        Ross,
>         
>    Hello.  I am at least the third person having the same problem on Windows 98 when trying to 
> use Latex2html on any file with equations in it.  I saw that you seemed to be an authority on the subject and was hoping to get some help.  The problem is that pstoimg.bat is unable to convert the images from pnm files to the series of temp files (t01,t02,t03...) because of a "Bad Command or Filename" that occurs when trying to execute pnmcrop.exe.
>          
>         I have a theory why this is happening.  In the subroutine do_cmd there is a line
>          
>         system("$cmd > $tmp");
>          
>         which would work perfectly, I suspect, on any OS besides Windows 98.  However, on ours, it doesn't work.  This is what causes the "Bad Command or Filename" error.  I was absolutely convinced of this when I wrote a short PERL script and saw that  'system("dir \b");' would result in just that error, while 'system("dir,\b");' would not.  The problem seems to be spaces between commands.  system just can't handle them for us.  But putting in commas doesn't help as this messes up function calls (and that wouldn't solve the extra space problem, though a little scripting would solve that).
>         
>         That's as far as I've gotten.
>          
>         Thanks for any help you can offer.

I've not attempted to do anything abut this problem as Windows 98 is not an
operating system that is available to me for testing LaTeX2HTML.

However, if you can determine the required fix, I'd be happy to patch either
the  pstoimg  script, or the installation routine, to include it.

Are you saying that what is required under Win98 is a system call:

   system("$cmd,$tmp");

without any spaces ?  --- and several others of the same ilk.

Perhaps this is not enough in general, as you say:
    "putting in commas doesn't help as this messes up function calls"
but is it enough in the cases used within  pstoimg ?

If not, then you (or others facing the same problem) will have to work out
what is the correct syntax, and provide me with an appropriate patch for Win98. 


Can anyone on this list verify that this problem occurs *only* with
Windows 98.  WinNT and Win2000 are OK, yes ?  and WinMe or WinXP ?
What about  Win95 or straight DOS ?

Make sure you quote the value of Perl's $OS with any response. 


Are there any other platform-dependent problems that anyone is facing ?



All the best,

	Ross Moore