[tex-live] Help! Would like to use xdvi with TeXLive2007 in cygwin

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Bo-Yin Yang writes:
 > Dear Sirs and Mesdames:

 > I got myself a TeX Live 2007 disk and installed that.  Now I can run
 > TeXLive, but I don't really want to use WinEdit or UltraEdit, I am too
 > used to emacs+auctex+xdvi.  Problem is, the TeXLive2007 windows
 > distribution doesn't have am xdvi.  Can someone furnish a xdvi package
 > compiled for cygwin, or point me to a step-by-step explanation of how
 > to compile one for myself.  Alternatively, can someone tell me how to
 > do something to the xdvi included in cygwin so that I can run it using
 > TeXLive's TDS.

Hi,
first of all, if you are an emacs user, you might want to use it on
Windows too even outside the Cygwin environment.  There is a Windows
version of emacs+auctex in the support directory of the TeX Live 2007
DVD already.  If you don't have the DVD you can download the latest
release from

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/auctex/emacs+auctex-w32-2007-07-07.zip

Just unzip the file somewhere and link runemacs.exe to the start menu.

If you have TL-2007 installed you can use it immediately and almost
everything works as on Cygwin.  However, you don't have xdvi.

There are two ways to get binaries for Cygwin.  You could try to use
the binaries I compiled myself, or you can compile them yourself.

I compiled the binaries from the sources which had been in the TL svn
repository last summer.  But AFAIK nothing had been changed since
TL-2007 had been released.  I had not been able to compile xetex and
dvipdfmx, maybe some libraries are missing or had not been
up-to-date, though the version of Cygwin I used was not very old.

The binaries are not tested at all, but you can download them from:

  http://ms25.ath.cx/cyg-bin-wo-xetex.tar.bz2

Then you have to copy the texmf stuff to the Cygwin environment.
There is a difference between Windows and UNIX.  On Windows you have
something like

  texlive2007/texmf*
  texlive2007/bin/win32
  texlive2007/texmf-local

On Cygwin/Unix it should like

  /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf*
  /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/i386-Cygwin
  /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

There is a file texmf-var/web2c/texmf.cnf which is the Windows version
of texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf.  You have to remove it.

Unzip the binaries in /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin.  This creates a new
directory "i386-cygwin".  Add this directory to PATH and run texhash.

I hope it works.  If not, either I forgot something or you have to
compile it yourself.  But explain the problem here before you proceed.

It's quite easy to compile TeX Live on Cygwin.  Read
.../Build/source/README.  It's sufficient to execute the Build script
but I had to add the options --without-xetex --without-dvipdfmx.

There is a severe bug in Cygwin which you have to circumvent somehow:
Cygwin appends its own directories to the PATH it inherits from
Windows instead *pre*pending them.  I had problems with name clashes.
As a quick workaround you could do

  echo $PATH

  export PATH=< $PATH with Windows stuff removed >

in the current shell before you start the Build script.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
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