[OS X TeX] tex4ht question

[cfrees at imapmail.org]

On Mon 24th May, 2010 at 10:53, Adam M. Goldstein seems to have written:

>
> On May 24, 2010, at 9:51 AM, <cfrees at imapmail.org> <cfrees at imapmail.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon 24th May, 2010 at 08:29, Herbert Schulz seems to have written:
>>
>>>
>>> On May 24, 2010, at 3:42 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>>
>>>> Am 24.05.2010 um 05:29 schrieb Adam M. Goldstein:
>>>>
>>>>>> tex4ht.c (2007-04-21-21:07 kpathsea)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Your version of this file is quite old. Looking at the large list of languages supported by Babel it's obvious for a second time that you never updated TeX Live 2009. An update might cure your problem.
>>>>
>>>> If not, then a problem exists in that you use zsh interactively and the TeX4ht scripts are Bourne shell based. This can indicate that you missed to prepare your system for the Bourne shell.
>>>>
>>> The version of tex4ht.env I have is
>>>
>>> % tex4ht.env / .tex4ht (unix)           2009-01-20-20:54 %
>>>
>>> so I'd guess that Pete is onto something here.
>>>
>> This seems right except that the version of TL in use seems to be 2009
>> judging by the output from (pdf)TeX itself. That suggests to me that
>> there may well be a mixture of different versions of the software
>> around. That in itself need not be a problem as long as PATH etc. is
>> configured right (e.g. via the TeX distribution preference pane) but
>> maybe that isn't happening correctly in this case.
>>
>> MacTeX modifies the shell environment for sh/bash and tcsh/csh. Does it
>> do this for zsh as well? If not, you might see strange mix-ups
>> depending on the actual shell environment, mightn't you? Or does the
>> fact that pdfTeX etc. are found correctly show that this cannot have
>> anything to do with the problem?
>>
>> You might try:
>> 	echo $PATH
>> 	locate tex4ht.env
>>
>
>
> My path has the texbin directory in it, and I set it up using the TeX distribution preference pane. So far as I remember, I downloaded the whole 2009 MacTeX distribution; but maybe I didn't get the complete package but rather a late "beta".

Even if texbin is in your PATH, if it isn't first, it is possible that
older versions of things are being found before the system ever gets to
texbin (if you've got older versions somewhere in your PATH before
texbin).

> In any case---again Pete has got the answer. Everything runs fine in bash. I will tinker with the zsh .profile or whatever it is. My bash and zsh environments are set up differently, apparently, because the $PATHS are different.

bash's environment is modified by MacTeX to put texbin at the front of
$PATH but the startup files which customise the shell (in this way) are
not read if the shell is non-interactive. So when you change shells and
then run htlatex, you are benefiting from MacTeX's customisations but
when you run htlatex from a zsh shell, you are not because htlatex is a
shell script and so (ba)sh never processes the relevant customisations.

- cfr

> Thanks everyone for offering so much help! And, this time the problem is solved! Yay!
>
> Adam
>
> ------------------
> Adam M. Goldstein PhD, MSLIS
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