[AUCTeX] Install report: XEmacs and Windows XP

[Michael Forster]

Hi, there

I've been a heavy user of AUCTeX under XEmacs/Windows for many years, 
since it is nicely integrated into the standard XEmacs distribution and 
basically works "out of the box". Maybe this is the reason, why you 
don't get much feedback. Let me say, AUCTeX is wonderful. Please 
continue your good work.

I always wanted to try out preview-latex and having read the recent 
discussion about the release, I thought, some testing by an 
unexperienced (in terms of installing AUCTeX) user on XEmacs/Windows 
could help you to improve the XEmacs support and also the install 
documentation.

Please note, that the following is not meant as a rant, but rather as a 
guide, where the install story could be improved. I am sure that most 
other Windows users would have given up much earlier.

======================================================================

I did the following, starting on 2005-05-16 10:15 (+10:00):

1) O.k., so I thought, I'd start with a freshly installed XEmacs, 
without the risk of something being screwed up. So I moved away my 
~/.xemacs directory and downloaded the newest XEmacs (21.4.13) using the 
net installer

    http://www.xemacs.org/Download/win32/setup.exe

and native install. XEmacs/Windows currently comes with AUCTeX 1.46, so 
I deselected that. No problems. MikTeX is not reinstalled.

2) Check out AUCTeX from CVS using TortoiseCVS. No problems.

3) Where's the install documentation? README.CVS: run autogen.sh. Ok, 
Standard. What else? RELEASE? No install documentation. Ah!, 
doc/install.texi and doc/wininstall.texi. TeXinfo source? Well, probably 
my fault, because I got it from CVS.

4) Let's start with wininstall.texi. MSYS or CygWin is needed? O.k. I 
have Cygwin installed. Let's use that. XEmacs, MikTeX and Perl are 
installed, so all prerequisites are fine.

5) autogen.sh... Error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
makeinfo preview-latex.texi
' in @synindex.exi:11: Unknown index `vr' and/or `cp
' in @synindex.exi:12: Unknown index `ky' and/or `cp
' in @synindex.exi:13: Unknown index `fn' and/or `cp
/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mforster/My 
Documents/Scratch/auctex/preview/
doc//preview-dtxdoc.texi:474: Misplaced {.
/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mforster/My 
Documents/Scratch/auctex/preview/
doc//preview-dtxdoc.texi:474: Misplaced }.
/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mforster/My 
Documents/Scratch/auctex/preview/
doc//preview-dtxdoc.texi:475: Misplaced {.
/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mforster/My 
Documents/Scratch/auctex/preview/
doc//preview-dtxdoc.texi:475: Misplaced }.
/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mforster/My 
Documents/Scratch/auctex/preview/
 style file' (perhaps incorrect sectioning?).to nonexistent node `The LaTeX
makeinfo: Removing output file `/cygdrive/c/Documents and 
Settings/mforster/My D
ocuments/Scratch/auctex/preview/doc/preview-latex.info' due to errors; 
use --for
ce to preserve.
make: [preview-latex.info] Error 1 (ignored)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hm. seems to be just the documentation. I don't need that now. Maybe 
it's just a bug that will be fixed in some days. Ignore that:

    touch preview/doc/preview-latex.info
    ./autogen.sh

Now it works. Ah! Now there's also the INSTALL.windows file. Fine! But 
the line breaks are screwed up:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1. If you unpacked the distribution using Winzip or similar, you
     better
 restart using infozip on the `.zip' file, or standard
     Unix tools
 (see the next point) on the `.tar.gz' file: tools
     that make the
 mistake of turning Unix line endings into MSDOS
     line endings will cause
 trouble later in installation and
     operation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hm, I'll stay with wininstall.texi. Seems to be the same, anyways.

6) Now, how do I call configure? I'll probably need --prefix? What's the 
correct path for prefix? Probably "C:\Program Files\XEmacs". 
wininstall.texi said to use the C: syntax with forward slashes and to 
avoid spaces. I try to be clever here and use

    ./configure --prefix=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs

XEmacs package directory not found. Hm. configure could have been more 
clever.

    ./configure \
      --prefix=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs \
      --with-packagedir=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs/xemacs-packages

Ghostscript not found? Did the install documentation mention that? Must 
have missed that. Well, I have Ghostscript installed. How do I tell this 
to configure? I don't want to put it in the path. Ah 
preview/INSTALL.windows mentions it. Difficult to find. This should be 
in the top-level INSTALL.windows.

    GS="C:/Progra~1/Ghostscript/gs8.50/bin/gswin32.exe" \
    ./configure \
      --prefix=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs \
      --with-packagedir=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs/xemacs-packages

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
checking for latex... /cygdrive/c/Progra~1/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/latex
checking for pdflatex... 
/cygdrive/c/Progra~1/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex
checking for tex... /cygdrive/c/Progra~1/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/tex
checking for prefix from kpsepath... cat: ./conftest-3108: No such file 
or direc
tory
""
checking for TDS-compliant directory... ./configure: line 1: kpsepath: 
command n
ot found
no
checking for TeX directory hierarchy... no
checking for TeX input directory... no
configure: error: Cannot find the texmf directory!
Please use --with-texmf-dir=dir to specify where the preview tex files go
configure: error: /bin/bash './configure' failed for preview
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hm tex is found and is not found?? Again some info in 
preview/INSTALL.windows

    GS="C:/Progra~1/Ghostscript/gs8.50/bin/gswin32.exe" \
    ./configure \
      --prefix=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs \
      --with-packagedir=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs/xemacs-packages \
      --with-texmf-dir=C:/Progra~1/MikTeX/texmf

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!  Configuration is complete.


Type "make" at the prompt to build preview.
./configure: line 3858: cd: /cygdrive/c/Documents: No such file or directory

Congratulations!  Configuration is complete.

Type "make" at the prompt to build AUCTeX
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

7) Hm. Was this successfull? Let's try it:

    make

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
make[2]: /cygdrive/c/Progra\~1/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/tex: Command not 
found
make[2]: *** [preview-mk.ins] Error 127
make[2]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/c/Documents and 
Settings/mforster/My Docum
ents/Scratch/auctex/preview/latex'
make[1]: *** [texmf] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/c/Documents and 
Settings/mforster/My Docum
ents/Scratch/auctex/preview'
make: *** [all] Error 2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hm. It doesn't seem to like my ~1 notation... Let's try it differently

    GS="C:/Program Files/Ghostscript/gs8.50/bin/gswin32.exe" \
    ./configure \
      --prefix=C:/Program\ Files/XEmacs \
      --with-packagedir=C:/Program\ Files/XEmacs/xemacs-packages \
      --with-texmf-dir=C:/Program\ Files/MikTeX/texmf
    make

Same error! What? From where does configure put up the ~1??? Ah! My 
Path. I didn't want to spend more time and just executed the tex calls 
by hand.

    cd preview/latex
    tex '\nonstopmode \input bootstrap.ins'
    tex '\nonstopmode \input preview-mk.ins'
    latex '\nonstopmode \input preview.drv'
    pdflatex '\nonstopmode 
\AtBeginDocument{\OnlyDescription}\input{preview.drv}'
    cd ../..
    make

Ah! It worked!

8)  make install

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
/usr/bin/install: omitting directory `C:/Program'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

grmpf!!

    GS="C:/Program Files/Ghostscript/gs8.50/bin/gswin32.exe" \
    ./configure \
      --prefix=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs \
      --with-packagedir=C:/Progra~1/XEmacs/xemacs-packages \
      --with-texmf-dir=C:/Program\ Files/MikTeX/texmf
    make
    make install

Finally!!!

9) Let's Start XEmacs. Auctex is started automatically on a LaTeX file. 
Good! But it tries to execute xdvi for preview. I expected that. Put 
(require 'tex-mik) in my init.el. Works fine.

10) Try preview: C-c C-p C-d, Cache preamble: y, "No such file or 
directory gs". Customize the GS command. Works now


Summary of things, I'd like to see fixed:

a) Handling of spaces in path names is subomptimal. Yes, I know, the 
INSTALL file says: Don't use spaces. Unfortunately "C:\Program Files" is 
the standard on Windows. Like it or not, but I won't install any 
software in non-standard places. If a software does not work with 
"C:\Program Files" I at least expect "C:\Progra~1" to work. If this is 
not the case, I won't use the software.

b) Fix compile error in preview-latex.texi

c) Fix screwed line breaks in INSTALL.windows

c) Move all relevant install information to the top-level INSTALL.windows

Mike