Re: context on miktex

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

goch@unb.ca wrote:

> > (1) make sure you can run texexec from any path (by using a bat file or
> > the runperl.exe launch program)
> 
> For some of us it is not obvious how to do this. A search of my
> computer for "texexec.*"  yields no Win95/DOS executables, and I
> don't have runperl.exe either.

texexec.pl and texutil.pl are perl scripts. The first provides a command
line interface to tex (and more) and the second deals with context
auxiliary files (and again some more). The main idea behind texexec is
to make running tex a bit more comfortable, texutil takes for instance
care of sorting indexes. 

Both used to be dos/windows binaries (modula 2 programs) but because I
want to use linux too, some time ago these scripts were translated to
perl. Our editing environment is recently translated to perl/tk and will
be released later.  

> What do I need besides a functioning mikTeX system on Win95?

active state perl 

> Or should I be using some command other than "texexec"?

runperl.exe (I will put it at our site) is simply a perl launcher (under
unix this is more straightfoward). One needs to copy runperl.exe to
texexec.exe and texutil.exe. All need to be in the same path. So,
"runperl.exe copied to texexec.exe" is actually "perl texexec.pl". 

> [ Needless to say, I have many executables like "tex" "pdftex"
> "latex" "initex" etc. ]

Actually only two of these are originals: tex and pdftex. Latex is not a
binary but launches tex with a latex format file. Of course there could
be a context, being tex with a context format file, but because context
comes with different user interfaces, this would lead to many contexes.
Furthermore, I don't want to add to much binaries to the tex
distributions and redundant entries to the texmf configuration files.
Texexec will sort this out for you. 

  texexec --make en 

makes an english format cont-en.fmt and puts it in the right place. In
the latest texexec (on beta page) 

  texexec --make --language=pl --bodyfont=plr en 

makes a format that default to the polish language, with polish fonts,
and an english interface. (This feature was added recently after some
discussions behind this list; I still have to update the texexec
manual; texexec version 1.6 also takes care of automatic code page
translation, but texutil must still be adapted to this; translating the
interface/manual to polish is currently discussed). 

  texexec yourfile 

is the way to process a file. Texexec takes care of running tex as many
times as needed to sort out the references, tocs, etc. There are quite
some additional features, like making booklets, etc etc. 

It may look complicated, but you can run context with a rather limited
set of files installed: a pdfetex binary (gives you tex, etex and
pdftex), the plain and etex files, some fonts and related files,
hyphenation patterns, the context zip, the two perl scripts and a
viewer. Most of them are normally part of distributions. (If one uses
context exclusively, one can do without installing latex and redundant
font files, which can save quite some disk space and file searching
overhead). 

I hope this clarifies things a bit. There are manuals on texexec and
texutil on our site. Did you fetch those? 

Hans

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