[pdftex] PDFTEX Help

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sun Apr 11 00:42:07 CEST 2010


On 9 April 2010 Thanh Han The wrote:

 > On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 2:59 PM, marco migliavada
 > <marcomiglia at hotmail.com> wrote:
 > > Ciao,
 > > I need some help from expert about pdftex installation.
 > > I'm trying to use pdf crop perl script that need pdftex installation.
 > > the script fail in this way
 > > * Running pdfTeX ...
 > > * pdfTeX call: pdftex -no-shell-escape -interaction=nonstopmode
 > > tmp-pdfcrop-11134
 > > Can't exec "pdftex": No such file or directory at ./pdfcrop.pl line 802.
 > > * Cleanup
 > > * Temporary files: tmp-pdfcrop-11134.tex tmp-pdfcrop-11134.log
 > > !!! Error: pdfTeX run failed!
 > >
 > > It seems that pdftex is not installed and effectively I cannot
 > > fin this file
 > > in my Solaris environmnet.
 > > To install I foollow instructions
 > > Try the script build-pdftex.sh in this directory:
 > > ,--------
 > > | ./build-pdftex.sh
 > > `--------
 > > If it succeeds, you should end up with the files pdftex and
 > > pdftex.pool in build-pdftex/texk/web2c but I cannot find pdftex
 > > and pdftex.pool anywhere.  The log and the screen don't sow
 > > errors.  Can someone help me?
 > 
 > please try to install texlive www.tug.org/texlive/ which will
 > be the easiest option I think. Building pdftex from sources
 > and get it working is not easy if you haven't used tex/pdftex
 > before.

I'm wondering where the phrase "If it succeeds, you should end up with
the files pdftex and pdftex.pool...." comes from.  pool files are not
needed any more for many years.

And the very last line in build-pdftex.sh is:

ls -l $buildDir/texk/web2c/pdftex

Hence, it shouldn't be too difficult to find the binary.  It's often
helpful to be familiar with tools like find(1).  But of course, a
standalone pdftex binary is pretty useless.

However, I'm a bit confused about svn log entries like these:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r573 | thanh | 2009-07-11 22:33:39 +0200 (Sat, 11 Jul 2009) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /trunk/source/src/texk/web2c/pdftexdir/mapfile.c

treat TTC fonts as TTF
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r572 | thanh | 2009-07-11 22:33:21 +0200 (Sat, 11 Jul 2009) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /branches/stable/source/src/texk/web2c/pdftexdir/mapfile.c

treat TTC fonts as TTF
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that development takes place in branches/stable/ and stuff is
copied to trunk/ later.  I would expect it vice versa.  I'm just going
to set up a TeX Live environment which allows me to test the latest
stuff.  Where should I compile?  In trunk/ or in branches/stable/?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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