Re: [Bug-AUCTeX] preview-1.287; Installation warns about impossibilities

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2013-07-01 at 08:55:35 +0200, Tassilo Horn wrote:

 > Reinhard Kotucha <address@hidden> writes:
 > 
 > Hi Reinhard,
 > 
 > >  > > BTW, there is rarely a need to install Ghostscript explicitly.
 > >  > > On Unix systems it's ubiquitous anyway, MacTeX provides
 > >  > > Ghostscript, and both, TeXLive and MikTeX provide a "hidden" (not
 > >  > > in PATH) Ghostscript for Windows.
 > >  > 
 > >  > Oh, good to know.  Now preview.el tries rungs, mgs, GSWIN32C.EXE,
 > >  > and gs in that order.  Before, on windows it always required
 > >  > GSWIN32C.EXE, else gs.
 > >
 > > thanks.  However, I'm not sure anymore about mgs.  I don't have
 > > Windows and can't test anything myself.  But I googled a bit today and
 > > found a few nasty things.  It seems that mgs.exe is not a wrapper but
 > > just a re-named gswin32c.exe.  This means that it uses compile-time
 > > search paths for Ghostscript's lib and fonts directories unless you
 > > set environment variables.
 > >
 > > This is bad because every program using mgs has to be adapted.  Even
 > > if mgs -help works properly, one can't conclude that anything else
 > > works because the interpreter isn't initialized if you only ask for
 > > the help message.  A better test is to run mgs without any arguments.
 > > It might complain that gs_init.ps cannot be found.
 > >
 > >   http://blog.miktex.org/category/MiKTeX-How-To.aspx
 > 
 > Now mgs is only chosen if it's in PATH and
 > 
 >     $ mgs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH
 > 
 > returns a zero exit code.  I've tested that on one windows box where mgs
 > is configured correctly, but I have none where you get the cited error,
 > so I'm not completely sure it returns non-zero then...

Good to hear.  The messages I found are quite old, the latest is from
2010.  The reason it works now is probably because recent versions of
Ghostscript have the libraries and fonts compiled-in.  I don't
remember when this change was made, maybe in version 8.63 or 8.64.
There might be problems with older versions [of MiKTeX].

TeX Live doesn't rely on the built-in stuff because we don't want to
use the modified fonts shipped with Ghostscript.  Instead, we provide
the authentic URW fonts maintained by Walter Schmidt on CTAN.  Hence
TeX Live needs the environment variables.

 >     $ mgs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH

In order to test whether the interpreter works you can try

  mgs -q -dNODISPLAY -c "2 3 mul ==" -c quit

or, if you are only interested in the exit status,

  mgs -q -dNODISPLAY -c "2 3 mul" -c quit

Given that many people are still using ancient versions of MiKTeX,
it's certainly worthwhile to check somehow whether the interpreter
works.

BTW, could you please inform me when new Emacs/AucTeX releases are
avalable?  I'm maintaining Emacs+AucTeX for Windows on CTAN.

  http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/win32-emacs-auctex

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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