[tex-live] texdoc error

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Philip TAYLOR scripsit (01.09.2008 11:53)
>> start "" "c:\path\to\minitoc.pdf"
> 
> Works fine, as does
> 
Well, it's exactly what texdoc is supposed to do...

> What does not work (brings up a CMD box) is
> 
>     start "c:\path\to\minitoc.pdf"
> 
Known. start has a very wierd syntax.

>> is doing (try texdoc -v minitoc to confirm) 
> 
> Cannot confirm : "texdoc -v minitoc" does
> nothing detectable apart from report the version.
> 
So stupid of me. "texdoc -n4 minitoc" is the correct syntax, as you found out
yourself.

>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>texdoc -n32767 minitoc
>> texdoc debug1: start ""
>> "D:\TeX\Live\2008\texmf-dist\doc\latex\minitoc\minitoc.pdf"
>>
>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>
> 
> which died as before.  The same "start" command copied and pasted
> into the existing CMD window works fine.
> 
This I cannot understand. The two relevant line of the code are:

        err_print(view_command, 'debug1')
        view_result = os.execute(view_command)

As you can see, texdoc doesn't lie to you: it really tries to execute the
command it says it does. Can you please try the following minimal texlua code?

os.execute('start "" ' ..
'"D:\TeX\Live\2008\texmf-dist\doc\latex\minitoc\minitoc.pdf"')

(put it in a file an run texlua 'file')

> What is the purpose of the leading '""' ?  Is this needed
> to work around the need for quotes around the path when
> the latter contains spaces ?
> 
When the first argument to start is quoted, start assumes it's the (optional)
title of the new window. So the purpose of the initial "" is to prevent start
from thinking the quoted filename is the title.

I just come to think of it, maybe AR doesn't like this empty title setting.
What I really can't understand is why the same command works when directly
typed in the command line.

> I haven't tried any (I never use TeXdoc); if you can
> suggest a few, I will try them.
> 
texdoc, live, latex2e, impatient, hyperref, beamer, pgf, (in theory any recent
LateX package you can think of).

>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>texdocc -v minitoc
>> I now display a document by the command
>> cmd /c start d:/TeX/Live/2008/texmf-dist/doc/latex/minitoc/minitoc.pdf
> 
Ok, so maybe I should use a similar command line from texdoc too.

> I am just setting up a duplicate setup with forced spaces
> in the path (".../texmf dist/...") to see how this will
> affect things ...
> 
Thanks a lot.

Actually, I have very few knowledge of windows, and for some reason AR doesn't
want to install on the only copy of it I have, so I can't even test things
myself...

Manuel.