still no metapost graphics

still no metapost graphics

[Johannes Hüsing]

Hello again,

- I still have trouble with the Metapost graphics in a presentation style.
  At the moment I am trying out presentation style 4, which the Mondriaan
  -ish style. The shapes are apparently inserted by the
  \reuseMPgraphic macro. When running texexec over a file which uses the 
  style, "mpgraph not found" warnings appear all over the log. A Metapost
  source file is created along with the pdf output, so I run mpost mpgraph
  after texexec and then texexec again (should be done automatically as the
  second line of my source file says \runMPgraphicstrue, but I wouldn't
  mind doing it by hand, as long as it runs). Still, "mpgraph not found"
  messages scatter the log, and apparently only the mpgraph.6 file was 
  created by Metapost. What am I doing wrong?

- Another error message I am getting is the folowing one. The offensive 
  line is an empty one at the end of the document. Again -- any idea where
  to search?

Greetings

Johannes

  Argument of \complexdokop has an extra }.
<inserted text> 
                \par 
<to be read again> 
                   }
\doattributes ...ostartattributes {#1}{#2}{#3}{#4}
                                                  \dostopattributes 
\complexdokop ...er \c!kopkleur {\ignorespaces #2}
                                                  }\par \dosomebreak \nobrea...
l.73 

? 

----- End forwarded message -----

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Hans Hagen]

At 12:49 PM 4/27/2000 +0200, Johannes Hüsing wrote:

>  second line of my source file says \runMPgraphicstrue, but I wouldn't
>  mind doing it by hand, as long as it runs). Still, "mpgraph not 

also enable write18 in the file texmf.cnf ; now texexec thinks the graphics
are there and does not run mp automatically afterwards. With
runMPgraphicstrue and write18 enables, you get real runtime graphics 

>  Argument of \complexdokop has an extra }.
><inserted text> 
>                \par 
><to be read again> 
>                   }
>\doattributes ...ostartattributes {#1}{#2}{#3}{#4}
>                                                  \dostopattributes 

no idea -) a typo in the file? 

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Tobias Burnus]

Hallo Hans, hi all,

> also enable write18 in the file texmf.cnf ; now texexec thinks the graphics
> are there and does not run mp automatically afterwards. With
> runMPgraphicstrue and write18 enables, you get real runtime graphics
Well not only texmf, it also works if you set it as environment
variable, which is quite handy if you are ``normal user'' on a
workstation (tested with teTeX 1.0.6 on a XRIS 6 processor system and
shell_escape=f in texmf.cnf; export shell_escape=t was the magic
solution). By the way, sometimes it is better to postprocess the data,
because it is faster (I once had such a document, which generated 1200
MPs).

Tobias

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Ed L Cashin]

Tobias Burnus <burnus@gmx.de> writes:

> Hallo Hans, hi all,
> 
> > also enable write18 in the file texmf.cnf ; now texexec thinks the graphics
> > are there and does not run mp automatically afterwards. With
> > runMPgraphicstrue and write18 enables, you get real runtime graphics
>
> Well not only texmf, it also works if you set it as environment
> variable, which is quite handy if you are ``normal user'' on a
> workstation (tested with teTeX 1.0.6 on a XRIS 6 processor system and
> shell_escape=f in texmf.cnf; export shell_escape=t was the magic
> solution). By the way, sometimes it is better to postprocess the data,
> because it is faster (I once had such a document, which generated 1200
> MPs).

Sounds like it might be better to leave write18 disabled globally on
the system and set the environment variable when necessary.  For
security reasons, that is.  

It would make you think about it: "OK, I'm allowing this document
source to run commands."

-- 
--Ed Cashin                     PGP public key:
  ecashin@coe.uga.edu           http://www.coe.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Hans Hagen]

>Sounds like it might be better to leave write18 disabled globally on
>the system and set the environment variable when necessary.  For
>security reasons, that is.  

How happy I am to never have to bother about these issues.

Beware however, you'd better than also turn off runMPgraphics, in which
case texexec would run mp for you. 

I can think of a switch to set the env var.  

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Frans Goddijn]

Hi all,

I'm not fully up to date in the dicussions here but it seems a recent
exchange is about a problem I am experiencing also, namely context/PDFtex
saying a mpgraph is not to be found, when in fact it is located in the same
directory as the .tex file...

Hans wrote:

> also enable write18 in the file texmf.cnf ; now texexec thinks the
graphics
> are there and does not run mp automatically afterwards.

How do I do this enabling? The texmf.cnf in my personal directory has:

% Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
shell_escape = t

the one in the recently updated FPTEX directory has:

% Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
shell_escape = f

but I can't find a text explaining what the t or f variable mean.

Any ideas are welcome, in the emantime I'll try it by uneducated guesswork
;=}}}

Groet!

Frans

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Olaf Weber]

Frans Goddijn writes:

> How do I do this enabling? The texmf.cnf in my personal directory has:

> % Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
> shell_escape = t

"t" for true.

> the one in the recently updated FPTEX directory has:

> % Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
> shell_escape = f

"f" for false.

-- 
Olaf Weber

Part of being competent is knowing that you might be wrong ... even if
you were correct yesterday with the same answer.       -- Barry Kearns

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Hans Hagen]

Hi Frans and Olaf, 

concerning mpost: 

  in your local cont-sys.tex file you should say:

\runMPgraphicstrue 

>> % Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
>> shell_escape = t
>
>"t" for true.
> ...

Just a year ago, Thomas Esser and I discussed (in the bus to bachotek) the
possibility to add a 'permitted binaries' list to web2c/texmf, in order to
prevent misuse. Was this ever considered an option?   

[Some day soon I will add such a feature at the macro level, but at the
system level is actually better.] 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Olaf Weber]

Hans Hagen writes:

> Just a year ago, Thomas Esser and I discussed (in the bus to bachotek) the
> possibility to add a 'permitted binaries' list to web2c/texmf, in order to
> prevent misuse. Was this ever considered an option?   

Back-burner stuff.

One problem is that the list itself has to be safe.  For example, if
multiple conffiles are combined (for convenience) and looked for in
the current directory (also for convenience) then you could write
"addenda" to the list in the first pass, and do no-so-nice things in
the second.

-- 
Olaf Weber

Part of being competent is knowing that you might be wrong ... even if
you were correct yesterday with the same answer.       -- Barry Kearns

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Frans Goddijn]

I wrote:

> % Enable system commands via \write18{...}?
> shell_escape = t

> shell_escape = f

I tried both and even, just guessing, E for enable, but nothing changed.

Groet!

Frans

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Frans Goddijn]

Hello Olaf,

> "t" for true.
> "f" for false.

ah, how could I overlook it... thanks! Neither setting makes a difference in
my case though.

so there's one more thing about this mpgraph.mp file / command thing that I
don't get. the log file says the file was not to be found, and it IS sitting
there in the same directory as the tex file that's being compiled...

Groet!

Frans

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Johannes Hüsing]

On Sun 2000-05-07 (14:57), Frans Goddijn wrote:
> 
> Hello Olaf,
> 
> > "t" for true.
> > "f" for false.
> 
> ah, how could I overlook it... thanks! Neither setting makes a difference in
> my case though.
> 
> so there's one more thing about this mpgraph.mp file / command thing that I
> don't get. the log file says the file was not to be found, and it IS sitting
> there in the same directory as the tex file that's being compiled...

Maybe you could post a minimal example that won't work on your machine?

Johannes

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Frans Goddijn]

> Maybe you could post a minimal example that won't work on your machine?

thanks, good idea. I will do that. I'm not at home right now, will get there
next week and work on it further.

groet!

Frans

Re: still no metapost graphics

[Thomas Esser]

> One problem is that the list itself has to be safe.  For example, if

Sure. But the same is true for shell_escape that we have at the moment.

Thomas