[OS X TeX] Different LaTeX interaction modes

[Paul Mantz]

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear.  I am rendering .png files
for web display using LaTeX, and I am rendering them in the following
order:

.tex to .dvi (latex)
.dvi to .png (dvipng)

The interaction modes I'm referring to are internals of latex, and can
be invoked by typing:

latex -interaction=batchmode

or

latex -interaction=nonstopmode

The former is nice and quiet and has no screen output, but halts on
any error, so you have to go through and look at the log files if
anything is awry.  I'm still trying to figure out more about the
latter.

What my scripts do is chop up the files and render various chunks of
it so that they can be linked into a mysql database for display on the
web; but that part is unimportant.  One of the differences I noticed
was in the mode, but  I found that the interaction mode isn't the
problem.  I would like to find some more in-depth documentation on
these so I can figure out what is the best option.

I found out that my actual problem is that since I am calling these
programs from within Apache, the $HOME variable isn't set, so kpathsea
doesn't know where my user texmf tree is.  Thus, I had to move my
~/Library/texmf/ folder into /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/, which is
not such a big deal.  What is annoying, however, is that dvipng is not
reading my fonts!  latex is running fine and sees my font, but dvipng
is incapable of finding it.  For reference, I am using Trebuchet MS,
generated from a TrueType format into type1 format, and now stored at
texmf-/local/fonts/type1.

I mentioned ricoh only because I thought my problem might be
associated to the modes, but that makes no sense in retrospect.
However, I am wondering why kpathsea is not loading my fonts for
dvipng, but is for latex.  Does anyone have any insight into that?
There's no mention of dvipng in texmf.cnf, so what is its include path
most resemble?

Thanks,
Paul

On 10/9/07, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:
> Le 9 oct. 07 à 17:35, Paul Mantz a écrit :
>
> > I'm doing some web-graphic rendering using LaTeX and a lot of the
> > scripts I've seen that I've been tweaking and such have different
> > interaction modes.  I've tried googling them, but haven't come up with
> > any documentation detailing what the exact consequences of each one
> > are, aside from what I can assume from their name and my own
> > experience.  I also have tinkered around in the original texmf.cnf,
> > and I am under the impression that the texmf*/ directories searched
> > before executing change depending on the mode.
>
> Even after reading this thrice, I've absolutely no idea what you're
> talking about. What's "web-graphic rendering", how can it use LaTeX,
> what are these scripts supposed to do and what is an interaction mode?
>
> > Can anyone point me in a good direction to look into this?  Also, what
> > is ricoh mode?  For someone with a default texmf.cnf, I'm talking
> > about line 277.  This is also the area that leads me to suspect that
> > different modes will warrant different include paths.  If anyone knows
> > where I could find some documentation on the various modes, that
> > would be greatly appreciated.
>
> ricoh looks like the name of one of the printers defined in
>
> /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/metafont/misc/modes.mf
>
> and used by MetaFont to generate bitmap PK files from original MF
> sources.
>
> If you're indeed creating graphics for use on the web, you'll want to
> use vectorial fonts (PostScript, TrueType or OpenType), not bitmap ones.
>
> Bruno Voisin
>
>
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