[Gnumed-devel] pdflatex and dependencies was Re: [Gnumed-bugs] <bug>: Trying to print the basic medication form

[Jim Busser]

On 2009-12-30, at 5:06 AM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:

What does

$> pdflatex --version

say ?

See below (under yours)

(presumably from the package texlive-base-bin;

apt-cache search pdflatex:

fragmaster - use of psfrag constructs with pdflatex
latex-beamer - LaTeX class to produce presentations
texlive-latex-extra - TeX Live: LaTeX supplementary packages
ctioga - Befehlszeilen-Plot-Werkzeug
pdfjam - Sammlung von Verarbeitungswerkzeugen für PDF-Dokumente
pgf - TeX Portables Grafik-Format
purifyeps - erstellt EPS-Dateien zur Benutzung in TeX und pdfTeX

So, rather texlive-latex-extra (I wouldn't have guessed that either).

I think the above is wrong:

1) the apt-cache command allows you to search through both descriptions and package names... the listing is no guarantee of which package provides a certain binary

2) the command pdflatex exists in my system, despite my not having texlive-latex-extra installed

3) my difficulty locating the source package for the pdflatex "binary" (command) may be explained by pdflatex not being a binary in its own right but rather a virtual (?) binary...

wikipedia says:

LaTex is simply a macro package for Tex … [h]ence, pdflatex, for example, calls the pdfTeX program using the standard LaTeX macros

a CTAN site document ifpdf.pdf says:

… many TEX distributions replace the traditional TEX binary with pdfTEX. Then, for example, called as latex pdfTEX works in DVI mode with the LATEX format preloaded, called as pdflatex pdfTEX starts in PDF mode.

and a "how to install PDFLaTex binary" tips site indicates you do it by getting pdftex and among the subsequent terminal installation lines appears:

pdfinitex pdflatex.ini

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PdfTeX

ftp://ftp.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek/ifpdf.pdf

http://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk/bjc97r/tips/latex-install.html

is it a GNUmed dependency?)

It will be (0.6).

It seems that only

texlive-base-bin

is the dependency (which already appears in my desktop install of Lenny unless some additional package caused it to be installed). That is, *unless* we identify that gnumed 0.6 (medication list printing) won't work without *also* depending on

texlive-latex-extra

but do you *actually* have this installed, or is it just appearing in your apt-cache?

 

therefore is this state consistent with the error?

Not really, but further confirmation can be gotten from what
starting pdflatex in a console says. Mine does this:

pdfTeX using libpoppler 3.141592-1.40.3-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.6)
...

when I do

pdflatex --version

I get the same output as did you did on all lines but the last three:

Compiled with libpng 1.2.40; using libpng 1.2.41
Compiled with zlib 1.2.3.3; using zlib 1.2.3.3
Compiled with libpoppler version 0.12.0

I get

Compiled with libpng 1.2.27; using libpng 1.2.27

Compiled with zlib 1.2.3.3; using zlib 1.2.3.3
Compiled with libpoppler version 3.00

presumably because my VM is Lenny (stable), with gnumed and some python dependencies from testing but I am not sure the minor upgrades would have anything to do with anything… my libpoppler3 is already newest (unless at issue is libpoppler-qt2 or -glib3) and I did since upgrade libpng12-0 and zlib1g (testing) and I also do now have virtual printing in my Debian VM (on my Mac), and have printed successfully to my home printer a screenshot (opened in Eye of GNOME 2.22.3) and still I get the unhandled exception. Unless the above really were a factor, and will not be fixed unless after pdflatex is recompiled (??).

So Karsten if you did in fact already install

texlive-latex-extra

I can try installing it, too and try again (though it might be nice to be isolate why we depend on it).

If that is not the solution, will an apt-get uninstall and apt-get (re) install of

texlive-base-bin

cause its components to get recompiled, or will I need some other method to recompile pdflatex?