New Members ⇒ New ProTex user, and a bit lost

[BernieC]

Hi -- I last used LaTeX about 30 years ago {and about five lifetimes ago} on the Unix system [BSD] at work. I've now tried to get LaTeX installed on my win10 system and I'm totally at sea. I've install ProTeX and it seems to have installed OK but if I try to do anything, like latex test.tex, I get a mysterious error and a logfile that I can't figure out

2020-01-11 15:29:42,010-0500 INFO pdflatex - starting with command line: pdflatex test.tex
2020-01-11 15:29:42,015-0500 INFO pdflatex - allowing known shell commands
2020-01-11 15:29:42,015-0500 INFO pdflatex - enabling input (output) from (to) processes
2020-01-11 15:29:42,019-0500 FATAL pdflatex - Configuration error: no conversion from type 0 to string.
2020-01-11 15:29:42,019-0500 FATAL pdflatex - Info: type="0"
2020-01-11 15:29:42,019-0500 FATAL pdflatex - Source: Libraries\MiKTeX\Core\Session\config.cpp
2020-01-11 15:29:42,019-0500 FATAL pdflatex - Line: 524
2020-01-11 15:29:42,023-0500 INFO pdflatex - finishing with exit code 1

What is it trying to tell me? Thanks!! and I hope I'll start remembering long unused muscles and not be a PITA to you folks.

Thanks
/Bernie\

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Bernie,

welcome to the forum!

I can see the error message coming from the file config.cpp (MiKTeX configuration settings). ProTeXt is a modified version of MiKTeX. Hard to say from a distance what may cause it without seeing the configuration files on your computer.

How about installing TeX Live? That runs on Windows (and on a lot of other platforms such as BSD I use it on Windows, on my Mac, and on Linuxand I'm very satisfied with it. I never encountered TeX engine errors on my installations.

Stefan

[BernieC]

I installed ProTeX, what's the difference between that and TexLive? The cpp files must be a temporary generated file, because it's not there now. What I'm really interested in is a version of LaTeX that'll make it [relatively? ] easy to use the normal Windows fonts.

I have to admit that the LaTeX world seems to be as dizzying as the Linux world with a constellations of distributions and such.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

That file is source code and probably not present on your system but for example on Github.

Well, there is one big distribution that is maintained and tested and ported to many platforms, and that is TeX Live. Then there is MiKTeX, a admirable effort of a single developer, only available for Windows. That's pretty much all today. (There are install bundles such as ProTeXt for MiKTeX and MacTeX for TeX Live for making life easier).

So that's simpler than with Linux distributions. And I simply go with TeX Live on Debian, Ubuntu, Mac OS X, Windows.

Stefan

[BernieC]

Makes sense -- I'll uninstall ProTeX and try Tex Live. Thanks!!

[BernieC]

This is bizarre. I can't uninstall ProTex. I went to Settings>Apps. I was a bit surprised that the installed program is "MikTex 2.9" but that's ok. I clicked uninstall and it tells me we will now finish the setup by populating the link directory with symbolic links to the MIkTex executables. And it is funny: it gives the choice of installing in ~/bin or /usr/local/bin. So somehow my install has turned into the final step of a *unix* installation. How can I get it to go away?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

That doesn't raise my trust in Windows or ProTeXt or MiKTeX.

It shouldn't do a lot in the registry I assume. So one may just delete the MiKTeX folder on the disk and then install TeX Live.

Stefan

[BernieC]

I'll try that but there are clearly some registry things, since it is listed in the 'installed apps' list and that won't go away just by deleting the folder. There's all a bunch of stuff in /user/appdata/local/Mik/tex. Win10 is rock solid so I doubt that that's the problem. I think that my inability to run any of the latex variants and my inability to uninstall means that ProTex didn't install properly.

I think I got it! Instead of uninstalling via Windows, I started the MikTeX console and found that when I got to it directly [rather than via the windows uninstall] it came up, had an "uninstall' option and properly uninstalled itself!! YAY! Now to go get Tex Live. Thanks for being patient

[BernieC]

I've loaded Tex Live and it all works!! Thanks for the help and advice. Now to see if I can figure out how to get it to use my Windows fonts.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

You can use your Windows fonts with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX. Simplest example:

Code: Select all

Code, edit and compile here:

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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Zapfino}
\begin{document}
That is a beautiful font.
\end{document}
 
 
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Run LaTeX here

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Stefan