[texhax] can't find input file?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 9 February 2010 Eric Abrahamsen wrote:

 > Thanks for all the responses! The difficulties continue but the error  
 > messages keep shifting slightly, and it's driving me crazy. I'm  
 > putting aside Emacs/Auctex for the moment and just using the command  
 > line. I've stopped with northern.tex and created a tiny test document,  
 > bob.tex, which also refuses to compile. Here's my Terminal session,  
 > tell me if I'm crazy:
 > 
 > (eric)~ $ cat bob.tex
 > \documentclass{article}
 > 
 > \begin{document}
 > This is the simplest possible document.
 > \end{document}
 > (eric)~ $ xetex bob.tex
 > This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.2-0.9995.2 (TeX Live 2009)
 > entering extended mode
 > (./bob.tex
 > ! Undefined control sequence.
 > l.1 \documentclass
 >                    {article}
 > ? ^D
 > ! Emergency stop.
 > l.1 \documentclass
 >                    {article}
 > No pages of output.
 > Transcript written on bob.log.
 > (eric)~ $ pdflatex bob.tex
 > This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (TeX Live 2009)
 > entering extended mode
 > (./bob.tex
 > LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
 > [[ snipped ]]
 > Output written on bob.pdf (1 page, 13924 bytes).
 > Transcript written on bob.log.
 > 
 > Latex and pdflatex compile correctly from the command line, but from  
 > within Emacs tell me they can't find the input file. XeTeX and TeX  
 > both produce the above error from the command line, and also from  
 > within Emacs.
 > 
 > I have no idea why the error messages are now slightly different than  
 > they were before, it seems to be because I switched from northern.tex  
 > to this simpler test document.
 > 
 > I know this must be something moronic that I did, but I can't imagine  
 > whatÉ

Your input file is written in LaTeX, hence you have to run either
latex, pdflatex, or xelatex in order to compile it.  \documentclass is
not defined in plain TeX.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------