Hello, Ken On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 17:27:28 -0500, Ken Brown wrote: > On 3/1/2017 4:45 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > Hello, texinfo.
> > I've just installed texinfo 6.1, and am having difficulty generating a > > .dvi file. I've encountered inadequate documentation, trying to do > > this. > > First problem: I do > > $ texi2dvi cc-mode.texi > > , and get the error message: > > /usr/bin/texi2dvi: texinfo.tex appears to be broken. > > This may be due to the environment variable TEX set to something > > other than (plain) tex, a corrupt texinfo.tex file, or > > to tex itself simply not working. > > This is a misleading message. texinfo.tex is not "broken", it is > > missing entirely. The environment variable TEX is not documented in the > > texinfo manual, so that bit of the error message is not useful. This is > > surely a documentation bug. > > On searching the texinfo manual, page "Printed Books" asserts that > > Texinfo provides a file 'texinfo.tex' that contains information > > (definitions or "macros") that TeX uses when it typesets a Texinfo > > file. > > This appears not to be true. I installed texinfo-6.1 in Gentoo > > GNU/Linux, and no such file was to be found. This is at best unclarity > > in the manual. > > Later on in this page, it says: > > You can get the latest version of 'texinfo.tex' from the Texinfo > > home page, <http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/>. > > I'm guessing here, but it seems to me that texinfo.tex is _not_ > > distributed with texinfo (why not?) and the user has to go to the > > trouble of downloading it separately. Why does this manual page not say > > this explicitly? I'm not particularly interested in getting the > > _latest_ version of this file. I just want _any_ working version. > > Even assuming I do get a texinfo.tex, what am I supposed to do with it? > > Where am I meant to put it, and how am I meant to tell texi2dvi where to > > look? Where in the manual is this documented? I couldn't find it > > anywhere. > > For now, I'm going back to texinfo 4.13, with which I can actually > > generate .dvi output. It would be nice to be able to do so in texinfo > > 6.1, too. The current manual doesn't tell me how to do this in > > sufficient detail. > Hi Alan, Thanks for the quick reply. > Upstream Texinfo does indeed provide texinfo.tex. The fact that it's > missing in the Gentoo texinfo package is due to Gentoo's packaging. A > quick google search seems to indicate that it's provided by Gentoo's > texlive-texinfo package. The file indeed is in Gentoo's texlive-texinfo package (thanks for telling me about this), and I actually had this installed when I tried to run texi2dvi. Again, the texinfo manual doesn't tell me how to tell texi2dvi how to find texinfo.tex. This is surely a documentation bug. I still don't know how to run texi2dvi. > Ken -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
