Re: [AUCTeX] Install report: Emacs and Windows 98

[Harald von Aschen]

At 11:48 23.07.05 +0200, Ralf Angeli wrote:
> * Harald von Aschen (2005-07-22) writes:
> > At 14:48 22.07.05 +0200, Ralf Angeli wrote:

Perhaps first my installation to have it complete here:

System Windows 98/second edition

Starting today, Thu Jul 28 19:04:22 MEZMS

First getting the versions

GNU Emacs 21.3.1 2004-03-10 from
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-21.3-fullbin-i386.tar.gz

AUCTeX Snapshot from
http://theotp1.physik.uni-ulm.de/~ste/comp/emacs/auctex/snapshots/ftp/auctex-current.zip

and putting them in a new directory.

MSYS-1.0.10.exe is already installed.

MSYS hangs after some operations, so change "4096" to "8192" in msys.bat 
line 25
start %COMSPEC% /e:4096 /c %0 GOTO: _Resume %0 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
to
start %COMSPEC% /e:8192 /c %0 GOTO: _Resume %0 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
then it works.

My $path in Windows relevant for this installation includes

/f/PROGRA~1/TEXLIVE/BIN/WIN32

(This is surely wrong as you have already mentioned below, please see my 
comment there)

Now

***********

GS="F:/Programme/gs/gs8.13/bin/gswin32c.exe" ./configure --prefix=g:/tst/emac
s-21.3 --with-texmf-dir=f:/Programme/TeXLive/texmf
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking for date in ChangeLog... 2005-07-21
checking for release in ChangeLog... not found, using 2005-07-21 instead
checking for emacs... /f/PROGRAMME/CYGWIN/BIN/emacs
checking if /f/PROGRAMME/CYGWIN/BIN/emacs is XEmacs... no
checking for Emacs prefix... cat: ./conftest-1648743: No such file or directory
""
checking if Emacs is recent enough... yes
checking for mule support... yes
checking if build directory is valid... yes
checking where lisp files go... configure: error: Cannot locate lisp directory,
use  --with-lispdir, --datadir, or possibly --prefix to rectify this

***********

This is different from my last installation. There was the site-lisp 
directory found.

O.k. perhaps a problem with this snapshot, my other installation was 
auctex-20050716-a.

Let's do it again. Here the only"not found", rest seems o.k.: (Sorry, here 
[...] means cutting off messages)

***********

$ GS="F:/Programme/gs/gs8.13/bin/gswin32c.exe" ./configure --prefix=g:/tst/emac
s-21.3 --with-texmf-dir=f:/Programme/TeXLive/texmf --with-lispdir=g:/tst/emacs-
21.3/site-lisp
[...]
checking for Emacs prefix... cat: ./conftest-1650175: No such file or directory
[...]
Congratulations!  Configuration of preview is complete.

Congratulations!  Configuration of AUCTeX is complete.

Type "make" at the prompt to build.

***********

Now I'm trying "make":
Here are the error messages

***********
Autoloads file /cygdrive/g/tst/auctex-20050722-a/auto-loads.el does not exist
[...]
make[1]: Entering directory `/g/tst/auctex-20050722-a/preview'
(cd latex ; make all)
make[2]: Entering directory `/g/tst/auctex-20050722-a/preview/latex'
/f/PROGRA\\\~1/TEXLIVE/BIN/WIN32/tex '\nonstopmode \input bootstrap.ins'
make[2]: /f/PROGRA\~1/TEXLIVE/BIN/WIN32/tex: Command not found
make[2]: *** [preview-mk.ins] Error 127
make[2]: Leaving directory `/g/tst/auctex-20050722-a/preview/latex'
make[1]: *** [texmf] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/g/tst/auctex-20050722-a/preview'
make: *** [all] Error 2

***********

My first proposal was the wrong directory shortcut in $path. So let's do a

PATH = "[old path corrected with f:/PROGRAMME/TEXLIVE/BIN/WIN32]"
export PATH

and again a
GS="F:/Programme/gs/gs8.13/bin/gswin32c.exe" ./configure --prefix=g:/tst/emac
s-21.3 --with-texmf-dir=f:/Programme/TeXLive/texmf --with-lispdir=g:/tst/emacs-
21.3/site-lisp

and then
make

and then
make install

and all is going through in a perfect way.

[...]

> > To deal with spaces is not very good so I have decided to do all
> > installations in directories without spaces. And again using "~" was not
> > working in the environmental variable GS.
>
> Path names with spaces should work if you quote them correctly.  The
> installation instructions include the following hints:
>
> ,----[ (info "(auctex)Installation under MS Windows") ]
> |    The installation procedure tries finding stuff in system search paths
> | and in Emacs paths.  For that to succeed, you have to use the same
> | syntax and spelling and case of paths everywhere: in your system search
> | paths, in Emacs' `load-path' variable, as argument to the scripts.  If
> | your path names contain spaces or other `shell-unfriendly' characters,
> | most notably backslashes for directory separators, place the whole path
> | in `"double quote marks"' whenever you specify it on a command line.
> |
> |    Avoid `helpful' magic file names like `/cygdrive/c' and
> | `C:\PROGRA~1\' like the plague.  It is quite unlikely that the scripts
> | will be able to identify the actual file names involved.  Use the full
> | paths, making use of normal Windows drive letters like ` 'C:/Program
> | Files/Emacs' ' where required, and using the same combination of upper-
> | and lowercase letters as in the actual files.  File names containing
> | shell-special characters like spaces or backslashes (if you prefer that
> | syntax) need to get properly quoted to the shell: the above example
> | used single quotes for that.

As I suppose MINGW32 is working with upppercase o.k. I have exported path 
with uppercase letters which has worked for me. What I have found
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/make-w32/2005-03/msg00033.html


> > Hm, what do you mean by "prefix" is not well defined and to abuse the 
> Emacs
> > directory? Do you mean the difference between personal home directory 
> under
> > Unix et. al. and program path under Windows?
>
> No.  On Unix-style operating systems programs mostly don't put their

[...]

Thank you very much for your explanation!

> So if you want to install new Unix-style software, where do you put
> it?  What is the prefix?

It is horrible because I have three hard disks installed here with a "grown 
up" installation hierarchie so it is somehow horrible.

> A clean way would be to create your own hierarchy and make the
> respective environments aware of executables, libraries, include
> files, shared files, etc.  It has the advantage that the installed
> programs don't interfere with files under the control of package
> systems or some such of the environments, but it may be tedious for
> many people carry out the tasks involved.  So they tend to put the
> stuff in one of the hierarchies available.

Yes, thank you, you are totally right, I should fix it.

> > Again as Michael I have to do the TeX calls by hand before my make goes
> > through without an error. I suppose it is the "~" in the filename. Here a
> > snip of my autoexec.bat inserted by TeXLive during installation
> >    set PATH=F:\PROGRA~1\TEXLIVE\BIN\WIN32;%PATH%
>
> What is the error message?

Please see above, as I have suggested the path of the TeXLive installation 
with "~" in it was not working.

> > Another hint which might be important for Windows 98 user is the length of
> > the path variable. As far as I can see is the space for an individual
> > environmental variable under Windows XP is 8192 bytes as given here
> > 
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds_shelloverview.mspx
> > but under Windows 98 it is not so easy so it has taken me a while to 
> find this
> > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;230205
> > to increase it if it is necessary (as e.g. here for me). Otherwise my path
> > variable was cut off.
>
> That's a joke, right?

Yes that's a joke and not very funny. Again with MSYS. My computer was 
crashing many times during installation, it was horrible. But today after I 
have changed the msys.bat as given above all is fine and working, no 
crashes! So this "environmental space" seems to be a little bit bad in 
Windows 98. Because other people with Windows XP, e.g. Uwe Siart and also 
Michael Forster, don't have this problems I suppose it is only with Windows 98.

Again I have some problems with Emacs and I suppose that they are the same: 
After doing some work menues are not working any more, no command is 
executed. The keyboard shortcuts are still working but nothing else. Close 
Emacs -> open Emacs -> same problem. Close Emacs -> restart Computer -> 
Open Emacs and all is fine. Yesterday I had the problem that AUCTeX was 
using the view command only with dvips && gsview and not with my dvi 
viewer. I don't know why, closing Emacs -> opening again, nothing has 
changed in my .emacs and no solution. Only after a System restart AUCTeX 
was again using windvi.

I'm very sorry to give you not a full overview for the first time but now I 
hope this helps here.

Best regards

Harald