Running TL{4|5|...} from the CD-ROM

Peter Flynn pflynn@imbolc.ucc.ie
Thu, 13 Jul 2000 13:46:51 +0100 (BST)


I was trying to get the TL4 running from the CD-ROM on a user's very
small system the other day. Not hard to set the path and get WinEdt
execute tex, latex, dvips and windvi, but I ran into a problem with
dvips/windvi trying to run mktexpk of course, as they had nowhere to
do the work and nowhere to install the pk files afterwards. Obviously
there is an environment variable to be set for these, but I was unable
to identify it: any pointers?

The user will now go and buy a nice new machine and dualboot linux
and win98 for other reasons, so I can install TL5 later. But the
paths presumably would hold true for trying to run the system direct
from the TL5 CD-ROM as well...it's a nice selling-point for people
that you don't have to interfere too much with their hard disks just
to demo the system, but getting it to auto-generate a few bitmaps
would be nice.

Is PDFlatex still unable to use Metafont-made (pk) bitmaps? Despite
their drawbacks in rendering, it would be nice to be able to create
PDF files with a \texteuro in them.

///Peter