On May 19, 2005, at 10:48 AM, Hank Stevens wrote:
The problem is that I don't get previews of .ps or .pdf files.
I performed the steps you laid out (THANKYOU for the clarity). Unfortunately, I now can neither get previews nor convert to Postcript or pdf.
1. My PDF (dvipdfm) option gives me text with figures missing (no error message),
2. my PDF(latexpdf) gives me 'Error while executing ps2pdf -Compatibility=1.3 'filename.ps' ',
3. my PDF (ps to pdf) gives an error messages of "Error while executing eps2pdf --outfile'path-filename' and Cannot convert Image (not existing file?)\No information for converting from eps to pdf.
Ah! What have I done?
Just to be clear: problems arise when you have a .eps image file inserted into your LyX document, and they are:
1. you don't get the graphics to preview on screen within LyX, and 2. generating PDFs fails.
Is that right?
If (1) is a problem, we'll have to do a little more digging into your set-up; let me know.
(2) sounds like it's the result of a known bug in LyX-1.3.5. The problem is that graphics files aren't being copied properly to the appropriate /tmp directory LyX uses, and so when LyX tries using eps2pdf it fails -- as you report in your #3. This bug will be fixed for LyX-1.3.6, though (if I remember correctly) the workaround is for you (a) to try creating the PDF file once, (b) manually copy your graphics files to the relevant /tmp directory and give them the right file names, and (c) try within LyX to generate the PDF file once more.
How do you know which is the relevant /tmp directory? After you've done (a), go to the Finder, select Go > Go to Folder..., and (assuming you haven't changed its location in your LyX Preferences) enter "/tmp". Then, in that folder, find the folder named something like "lyx_tmpdir124576EAvcl" (the random characters at the end of that will change each time you launch LyX). (If there are more than one of these folders, choose the one with the most recent creation date; the rest you can throw in the Trash.) Within that folder, will be more folders, named something like "lyx-tmpbuf##", where the "##" represents the number of the buffer LyX assigns to each file you open within LyX. Go to each of these, and find the one that has files inside it with the name of the file you're working on. (So if you're working on "MyPaper.lyx", you should expect to find "MyPaper.log" and "MyPaper.Tex", etc. in that folder.) That is the directory into which you should copy the graphics files.
How do you know what the right file names are to use when you copy those graphics files into this folder? -- Within that folder, you should also find files that encode in the graphics file name the complete directory structure in which the graphics file can be found. So, if I have "picture.eps" in /Users/bennett/Document/Research/, then I'll find a file named "_Users_bennett_Documents_Research_picture.eps". (What has failed causing your problems is that although LyX has created a file in that folder, the file is empty rather than being a copy of your original graphics file.) That's the filename you should use when you copy your graphics files into this folder.
Try this with a test document that doesn't have many pictures in it to see if that's the problem. If so, I can make a beta version of LyX-1.3.6 which fixes that bug available to you (or you can copy these pictures manually, if that's not too tedious). Again, let me know.
Bennett
