[OS X TeX] block comment

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 17 nov. 05 à 17:51, George Gratzer a écrit :

> On Nov 17, 2005, at 5:17 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>
>> Le 16 nov. 05 à 21:45, George Gratzer a écrit :
>>
>>> P.S. TeXShop does not like my book; it refuses to typeset it. It  
>>> says:
>>>
>>> [...]
>>> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/context/base/supp-pdf.tex
>>> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/context/base/supp-mis.tex
>>> loading : Context Support Macros / Miscellaneous (2004.10.26)
>>> ! Missing endcsname inserted.
>>> <to be read again>
>>>                    relax
>>> l.152 ...contextobject \donetrue \do \newif\ifdone
>>>                                                    \fi
>>> ?
>>> Process aborted
>>
>> This happens when LaTeX is processing the ConTeXt macro file supp- 
>> mis.tex. Why this file (and the accompanying supp-pdf.tex) is read  
>> in LaTeX is beyond me. At some point if I remember correctly they  
>> were even included during the compilation of the LaTeX format. Are  
>> these files called explicitly in your document TheLaTeXBook.tex?
>>
>> The error looks like an incompatibility between redefinitions you  
>> might have done (for example in TheLaTeXBook.sty) and those inside  
>> supp-mis.tex. In particular, the error message you get looks like  
>> those when a command that should have been \protect'ed hasn't, and  
>> you will notice that supp-mis.tex fusses with \protect and  
>> \unprotect.
>>
>> I searched through the whole /usr/local/teTeX/ with BBEdit for  
>> occurrences of supp-mis.tex. It seems to be included by mptopdf  
>> and mfpic; see also /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/doc/pdftex/ 
>> examples/example.tex.
>
> So a logical question to raise: if I just want to LaTeX ( I do not  
> want  mptopdf and mfpic, whatever they are), can I set my system  
> not to include supp-mis.tex ?

After about 2 hours of unsuccessful hunting, I finally resorted to  
BBEdit again to search /usr/local/teTeX/ for supp-pdf.tex (which is  
calling supp-mis.tex in turn) and finally saw the light: among the 27  
files containing the string "supp-pdf" is pdftex.def (the pdfTeX  
definition file for the graphics package) which contains:

\AtBeginDocument{%
   \edef\@tempa{%
     \catcode`\noexpand\!\the\catcode`\!
     \catcode`\noexpand\@\the\catcode`\@
     \catcode`\noexpand\?\the\catcode`\? }%
   \InputIfFileExists{supp-pdf}{}{}%
   \@tempa
}

Thus it seems that, in case the [pdftex] option to the graphics  
package is used, supp-pdf.tex then supp-mis.tex are read at the time  
\begin{document} is processed (which seems coherent with your log file).

I wouldn't attempt to change this behaviour myself if I were you.  
There are certainly good reasons why it is so.

The error you're faced with might be a bug, worthy of reporting to  
the teams responsible for pdftex.def or supp-pdf.tex. Possibly to  
Hans Hagen, involved in both?

A quicker, short-term fix could be reverting to TL2004 (or even 2003)  
with i-Installer, and see whether the problem persists.

Bruno Voisin------------------------- Info --------------------------
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