Re: [Dvipng] Windows MiKTex/TexLive2007 dvipng problems with fonts

[Jan-Ake Larsson]

Mark Hammond wrote:
> Jan-Ake Larsson wrote:
> 
>> This is happening because kpathsea (the TeX path-searching library)
>> cannot find the appropriate fonts, usually the hang is because it cannot
>> find _any_ fonts at all. The call to makepk is internal to kpathsea and
>> not anything that dvipng can influence, which is why the -q flag to
>> dvipng cannot do anything about the --verbose flag used by kpathsea.
> 
> MiKTeX seems to be using its own kpathsea emulation wherein directories are 
> set via the MiKTeX Options utility (in the Roots tab).  These settings all 
> appear correct, however.  The truly odd thing is that if I run dvipdfmx a PDF 
> is generated without error with properly embedded Type 1 font subsets.  
> However yap also generates PK fonts.

OK, that might hint at an explanation. I have very little insight into
how the MiKTeX port finds the fonts. In UNIX-type surroundings one
problem is sometimes that the dvipng binary is not installed in the TeX
tree, while search paths in the kpathsea configuration implicitly
assumes that any calling binary is. Which I have had to fix at configure
time by setting appropriate environment variables within dvipng.

Something similar might have happened in MiKTeX but I cannot help much
here since I don't have a system to test on. Basic problem is that I
don't have the compiler used.

>> This kind of report has popped up before (when using MIKTeX) and my
>> suggestion has been to reinstall. My guess is that the affected systems
>> have everything installed, but the font-searching paths are wrongly set.
>> I have not before seen the combination of MIKTeX and TeXlive, though.
> 
> I tested this on two systems, one running Windows Server 2003 and one running 
> Windows XP, both reproduced the issue with complete MiKTeX installations and 
> removal/reinstallation of the complete MiKTeX package.

Hm, and it runs successfully on the second invocation. Seems like a race
or something inside MiKTeX-kpathsea.

> In my particular case, the issue isn't with TeXlive (that isn't present on 
> either system).

Good, that means that there is no confusion of font search paths between
the two.

> This occurs using dvipng 1.12 included with MiKTeX 2.8.  I analyzed the 
> executable using dependency walker, and it has a dependency on 
> MIKTEX208-FREETYPE2.DLL.

Good, this means it certainly is the process of finding the fonts that
fails and nothing else.

Perhaps I can have a look at the source of the kpathsea emulation to see
what is going on, I dunno. But to do this I need time...

/JÅ



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