[tex4ht] [tex-live] TeX4ht does not work properly with default TeXLive Windows install

[Norbert Preining]

On Mi, 25 Aug 2010, Beuthe, Thomas wrote:
> Norbert seems to feel that a manual install of the other software is required, and that
> these packages should not be installed by TeXLive 2009.  This is the answer I expected
> given the philosophical leaning of the TeXLive install.  Don't get me wrong,
> I understand why this should be so.
> 
> Tomek on the other hand seems to feel that perhaps gs is all that's really needed to
> have TeX4ht working properly, and points out that it is in fact already provided
> with the install, albeit hidden.

Tomek is our Windows Master, so if he says so I trust him. But from what
I udnerstood and read in the tex4ht docs on quick glance is that it
uses convert, and if "convert" is not installed, and it is shipped
by *Magick then it will not work.

> My own question is a more general one.  If the TeXLive distribution provides a certain
> package like TeX4ht, should this package not work out of the box without further
> user intervention requiring the installation of other packages?

That would be nice, but there are limits of what we can do. We do not
and will not provide a full operating environment.

We tried to fix that for many programs requiring ghostscript by including
a hidden copy of it. But this is already a pain. Adding more and more
programs seems not to be a feasable option for me.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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