[tex-live] Kpathsea in TL2007

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Thu Feb 22 00:36:12 CET 2007


On 2/20/07, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:

> >>>>> "Akira" == Akira Kakuto <kakuto at fsci.fuk.kindai.ac.jp> writes:
>
>   >> I suppose that "env KPATHSEA_DEBUG=4 pdflatex ..." will not work
>   >> on Windows anyway, but you can probably write a small
>   >> program/batch file ...
>
>   > pdflatex --kpathsea-debug=4 ...
>
> Sorry, I overlooked it in the man page.

I too have guilty of too little reading of manuals.   I have been used
to solving tex problems using system tools but now find that I need to
tell others how to solve problems for themselves (often on Windows
machines).   The problems associated with user leaving old files
around where latex finds them have been growing (many people never
delete files, which they can do since disks are cheap, so the number
of old files is monotonically increasing).

Info and man pages aren't much help for most Win32. On *X, "man" is
getting to be a headache -- some systems generate pages of errors from
"awf",

:awf: /usr/people/gwhite/texlive/2005/texmf/doc/man/man1/pdftex.1,99:
command `.rb' unsupported or unknown

some use MANPATH, others use /etc/man.conf).  Info only helps the kind
of people who like emacs.

>   >> But what we need is to write stderr to a file or pass it to a
>   >> pipe instead of printing it on screen.
>
>   > cmd.exe supports the redirection: 2>err.log, while command.com
>   > does not support it.
>
> Thanks for the hint.  Good to know that it works now.  Is there some
> online documentation available?  Where do you have this knowledge from?

If you can find a Windows XP system that is actually working properly,
the "Help and Support" tool can be used to search for "redirection".
If you search for "HOME" one hit will be "Command shell overview",
which lists many environment variables.  Google then finds:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds_shelloverview.mspx?mfr=true

WinEDT seems to have 2 ways to run pdflatex, either directly via
macros or via a batch file in a cmd window, but many users are
intimidated by the WinEDT configuration tools, much less willing to
muck around in the macro files.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia


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