[luatex] detailed 'diagnostic' of MikTeX/Lua*/fontspec issues

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sun, 30 Jun 2013 11:30:36 -0400 schrieb Evan Cooch:

>>> If not, then its something weird on my
>>> machines (although I haven't the foggiest what that might be). I've now
>>> down installs/re-installs about 7-8 times in the past few days, and even
>>> by random chance alone, you'd think I'd hit the right combination.

>> Well perhaps you should reconsider your problem solving strategies.
>> Reinstalling 7-8 times doesn't help if the source of the problem
>> doesn't lie in the installation.
 
> Which is something you don't know until you've exhaustively tried out 
> various install sequences.

No, you also know if if you solve your problem without
reinstallation. 

> There are *many* different install sequences, 

And there are many other possible causes like e.g. a bug in the
luaotfload code. Do you really think randomly trying out more and
more installation variants is a sensible way to find you what's
going on?

>>> The termination always occurs after it has started scanning my
>>> working directory (which happens to be the Desktop for my
>>> account, which again is an admin account).

>> Then I would suggest to test if it works if you change the working
>> directory to a folder with a simple name - the desktop can contain
>> problematic chars.
 
> OK -- happy to try, but
 
> 1\ then such a 'problem' is an artifact of the new version of fontspec 

As you have a problem with luaotfload-tool fontspec is certainly not
involved. 

> (presumably) since during the detailed installs I tried yesterday, it it 
> worked fine -- desktop or not -- until the moment I upgraded the files.

Yes the updates you ran involved major changes - in the luatex
engine which changed from ~0.70 to ~0.76, in the lua included (5.1
to 5.2), in a lot of lua-packages which have been adapted to the new
luatex engine and most importantly in luaotfload where development
has made a great step in the last month. 

All this has been excessivly discussed at the begin of may when you
ran in problems with the new luaotfload and miktex had to revert to
an older version. 



-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/