Re: Installation blues

[Giuseppe Bilotta <bourbaki@bigfoot.com>]

Saturday, March 16, 2002 Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:

MLH> Hi!

MLH> I think ConTeXt looks like a great package, and I've thought so for
MLH> quite some time -- but I haven't been able to install it :I

MLH> I tried a while back to install it with MiKTeX, but gave up after a
MLH> while. I recently tried again, but after getting things in place (not
MLH> an easy thing), I got an error message from pdetex because it didn't
MLH> understand an option supplied by texexec. Oh, well, I thought, and put
MLH> it on the back-burner again.

I can only help you with the MiKTeX install (I'm a
ConTeXt-on-MiKTeX user :-)).

First thing: ABSOLUTELY DON'T use the ConTeXt that comes with
MiKTeX. It's outdated and the non-TeX part is badly implemented.
Rather, grab the latest beta from www.pragma-pod.nl or from the
FTP mirror ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/pragma/context/beta (the name of
the file is cont-tmf.zip).

Unpack the zip on the LOCAL TeX/MF tree, preserving directory
structure (the .zip is TDS-structured so it will plug in nicely
with whatever else you have there.)

Refresh the filename database.

Navigate to \localtexmf\context\perltk and unpack runperl.exe; copy
it to texexec.exe, texutil.exe and so on and so forth for each
Perl script. (BTW you can also use it for your own Perl scripts.)

Add the path to \localtexmf\context\perltk to your system path
(editing your autoexec.bat if your on Win9x/WinME, setting the
appropriate variable in the Control Panel in WinNT/Win2K/WinXP).

Edit \localtexmf\context\perltk\texexec.ini (if it's not there,
copy texexec.rme to texexec.ini and edit the .ini). FWIW, the
miktex part is set thus in my system:

for  miktex  set  TeXExecutable     to  pdfetex
for  miktex  set  TeXVirginFlag     to  --initialize
for  miktex  set  TeXPassString     to  --alias=context --terminal=oem --enable-write18
for  miktex  set  TeXBatchFlag      to  --interaction=batchmode 
for  miktex  set  MpToTeXExecutable to  mptotex
for  miktex  set  MpVirginFlag      to  --initialize
for  miktex  set  MpPassString      to  --alias=mpost --terminal=oem
for  miktex  set  MpBatchFlag       to  
% should be --interaction=batchmode but MiKTeX 2.1 does not support it!

for  miktex  set  TeXFormatFlag     to  --undump=
for  miktex  set  MpFormatFlag      to  --undump=

Finally, find your local copy of the miktex.ini file
(\localtexmf\miktex\config\miktex.ini) and in the [ConTeXt]
section add AT LEAST the following line:

pool_size=1000000

I also added:

write18 = enable

just in case I forget to use --enable-write18 in the texexec.ini
file.

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta