[texworks] Possible problem with the Windows version

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

On 2009-01-22 16:29, Alain Delmotte wrote:
>>> I copied everything which was in the c:\Program Files\TeXworks folder
>>> on the main to the same folder on the portable.
>>> When I want to start TeXworks I get an error message:
>>> "This application could not start because the configuration is not
>>> correct. Re-installing the aplication could solve the problem"
>>> Erasing the TeXworks folder created by TeXworks at first start did not
>>> help.
>>>
>>> Does the system requires some components which were used during
>>> compilation, present on my main machine (on which I compiled) and not
>>> present on the portable? Or is it another problem (MSVC 2008??)?
>>>     
>>
>> I don't think that this is a MSVC 2008 problem (though using 2005 is
>> probably the far better option as mentioned elsewhere). 
> I'll test the compilation with 2005

I'm looking forward to hearing your results. If you use 2008 it will
most likely create a lot more dependencies (the ones for KDE on Windows
and additional ones for the program compiled with MSVC 2008).

> I list here the files (all .dll except the TeXworks program) which
> were present for the old version (the one from the TeXworks
> distribution) and the one I have on the main computer on which I
> compiled. I also give the size old-new in ko
>
> freetype:      --, 388
> jpeg62:        --, 125
> linhunspell:   --, 320
> poppler-qt4:   --, 1592
> QtCore4:     2601, 1976
> QtGui4:     10167, 7180
> QtXml4:       494, 356
> zlib:          --, 74
> libfreetype: 2011, --
> minggwm10:    411, --

libfreetype and minggwm10 come from Jonathan's cross compilation setup
(he doesn't use MSVC). It seems that in his version, hunspell and
poppler are included in the TeXworks binary rather than being linked
dynamically as dll. Anyway since he uses a different procedure the
resulting files can differ easily. No need to worry about that.

> I added the files in c:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual studio
> 9.0\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.CRT
> (Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest, mscvm90, msvcp90 and mscvr90) either in
> the TeXworks program folder or in a folder in a path equivalent to the
> one on the main machine or as subfolder of the TeXworks folder.

The most straight-forward way would be to copy the whole contents of the
folder ...\Microsoft.VC90.CRT into a new folder
C:\texworks\texworks-read-only-release\Microsoft.VC90.CRT. Note that the
KDE on Windows libraries may have other dependencies (this especially
applies if you use MSVC 2008 for building). On second thought it may be
the best way not to simply copy the Microsoft.VC90.CRT folder (though I
have no idea why this shouldn't work as well) but run vcredist_x86.exe
(for 2005 it's located in
<path-to-msvc>\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86).
If all this doesn't help you could try to copy (some of) the manifest
files from your KDE on Windows installation (<path-to-kde>\manifest).

> Checking the dependencies on the *TeXworks.exe* of the machine on
> which I compiled and which is working:
> SHLWAPI warning
> MPR delay warning
> DWMAPI delay missing
> EFSADU delay missing
>
> I'll do the same on the portable.

Except for the first (which is a native Windows library AFAIK) I have no
idea what these files are. Since there are warnings about them / they
are missing on your host computer I wouldn't worry about them as the
programs seems to run fine without them.
I'm curious to hear about any (additional) dependency problems on your
portable machine, though.

> But it would be could to be able to distribute one or two files which
> would include everything is necessary to run TeXworks, like on the
> code.google.com.
> We are working to attract new users to LaTeX and installation problems
> are enough to make them fly away.

I realize that. Currently the guide we're working on is an attempt to
get TeXworks to build with native Windows tools at all, however. Once
that is accomplished we could think about minimizing the number of files
necessary to download/install. Right now it would seem that those are
three files: vcredist_x86.exe, texworks_libs.zip (containing all the
dlls) and texworks.exe.
If you check the KDE on Windows manifest files you'll notice that it
distributes a vcredist_x86.exe as well (which is likely to lurk around
somewhere in your temp folders). This means that we (most likely) need
to distribute the file as well if we want to use KDE on Windows libraries.
Of course an alternative to these three files would be an installer (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSIS for a free installer creation
utility), but there are new issues involved in this (especially as long
as TeXworks is in a pre-release phase where it's changing rapidly).

Hope this helps
Stefan