============================================================ Installation instructions for VTeX/Free 7.6 on Solaris (SPARC) ============================================================ Walter Schmidt 2002-04-24 Contents -------- What is VTeX/Free? Prerequisites Required files Installing VTeX/Solaris Deleting obsolete files Configuring VTeX/Solaris Creating the LaTeX format file Creating the plain TeX format file Installing the Adobe Euro fonts Documentation Known Bugs Support Legal stuff What is VTeX/Free? ------------------ VTeX/Free is a TeX program that generates PDF or PostScript output immediately from the TeX source file. It comes with a complete LaTeX system, including many additional packages and fonts, and a basic plain TeX. In contrast to traditional TeX systems, no intermediate DVI files are generated, no "dvi driver programs" are required, and there is no need to care for their -- sometimes problematic -- setup. In contrast to pdfTeX, VTeX includes a full PostScript interpreter, this inclusion of EPS images as well as inline PostScript programming, i.e. PSTricks, psfrag etc. are fully supported, The common PostScript and PDF viewers GSView and Acrobat Reader can be used for (pre)viewing and printing. VTeXs output files are immediately suitable for public distribution, e.g., over the WWW, since PostScript and PDF are standardized document formats -- as opposed to the TeX-specific DVI format. Note that PDF files created by VTeX version 7.30 and above do not conflict with Acrobat Reader 5. Prerequisites ------------- * VTeX/Solaris is for the SPARC platform only and requires Solaris 2.6 or better. * You must have installed Ghostscript, so as to provide a PostScript and PDF reader; furthermore, the Type1 fonts that are part of the Ghostscript distribution, will be used by VTeX, too. * It is highly recommended to provide also Acrobat Reader, because this is the "canonical" PDF reader, and because certain hypertext features of the PDF format are not supported by Ghostscript. Make sure to use version 4.05 or later! * The complete TeX system will require about 80MB of disk space. Required files -------------- vtexsun.zip (binaries for Solaris) vtex-texmf.zip vtex-fonts.zip vtex-special.zip vtex-fonts2.zip vtex-doc.zip vtex-sem.zip (optional) vtex-gex.zip (optional) Remarks: The archive vtex-sem.zip includes the LaTeX packages seminar and prosper; you need not install it, unless you actually want to use these packages. vtex-gex.zip includes the documentation of VTeXs built-in PostScript interpreter; omit this file, if you want. You may still install these two files at any later time. Installing VTeX on Solaris -------------------------- (1) Unzip vtexsun.zip in the directory /usr/local. Doing so will create a directory named vtex/ with several subdirectories: cd /usr/local unzip /vtexlnx (2) Unzip the remaining ZIP files in the directory /usr/local/vtex. Doing so will create a directory named texmf with several subdirectories: cd vtex unzip /vtex-texmf unzip /vtex-special unzip /vtex-fonts unzip /vtex-fonts2 unzip /vtex-doc unzip /vtex-sem unzip /vtex-gex (3) When VTeX is installed for the first time: Add /usr/local/vtex/bin to your $PATH . (4) When installing VTeX for the first time, or when updating from a version prior to 7.460: Copy vtex.ini from /usr/local/vtex/install to the directory /etc. This is the main configuration file, which may need to be customized -- see below. Do not delete the unchanged "template" from vtex/install ! Configuring VTeX ---------------- There are three main configuration files which may need to be adapted to your system. However, the information from these files suits most Unix systems already: /etc/vtex.ini /usr/local/vtex/texmf/vtex/config/pdf.fm /usr/local/vtex/texmf/vtex/config/ps.fm File vtex.ini: You may want to add further directories to the format search paths; see section 2.2.1 of the VTeX/Free Manual. Files ps.fm, pdf.fm: Locate the following section of each file: LOCAL-LNX { TEXMF = "/usr/local/vtex/texmf/" URW = "/usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/" } You may have to change /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts to the name of the directory where you keep the Type1 fonts that came with Ghostscript. Notice that both ps.fm and pdf.fm need to be edited and that the path must provide a trailing slash. The variable name LOCAL-LNX is for _both_ Linux and Solaris! (There is also a variable LOCAL_SUN, which is a remnant from an outdated version. It is _not_ evaluated.) Creating the LaTeX format file ------------------------------ Open a command line shell in an arbitrary working directory (however, not inside the TeX directory tree) and execute the following shell script: makevlatex You should move the log file latex.log to the directory /usr/local/vtex/fmt, so as to store it with the format file. If there is a complaint in the log file about "BAD file texsys.aux", then you have to delete the file texsys.aux from the current directory and try again; installation should run smoothly then. Now you should check, whether the installation works: Run the file ltxcheck.tex through LaTeX, thus making sure that the installation works. The file resides in the directory texmf/source/latex/base. Switch to this directory cd /usr/local/vtex/texmf/source/latex/base and execute the following command: vlatex ltxcheck This will produce a number of messages, each of which should be `OK'. Creating the plain TeX format file ---------------------------------- * * Omit this step, if you don't know what "plain TeX" is! * Execute the following command in an arbitrary working directory (however, not inside the TeX directory tree): makevplain You should move the log file plain.log to the directory /usr/local/vtex/fmt, so as to store it with the format file. Documentation ------------- See the files in the directory texmf/doc/vtex: local.eng Preliminary LaTeX Local Guide (read this first!) plain.eng plain TeX Local Guide (ignore it, if you don't know what "plain TeX" is) vtex.pdf The VTeX/Free manual font-setup.txt Preliminary description of the VTeX font setup gex.pdf GeX Manual forms.pdf How to use PDF forms from TeX animgif.pdf How to include animated GIFs into PDF documents psfonts.eng How to install additional Type1 fonts examples/* Sample documents Notice, that the sample file tryanim.tex and part of the examples in the document animgif.pdf do not work with Acrobat Reader 5, due to the "features" of the latest Acrobat. They do, however, work with Acrobat 4 and (almost) with Acrobat Reader 3 on OS/2, too. Caveats ------- * The VTeX/Solaris sisztibuton is in a somewhat experimental state. Actually, it is already a more advanced version (7.60) than VTeX/Lnx and VTeX/2 (7.5x). * The VTeX/Free manual still refers to Linux and OS/2 only, and does not yet cover the additional features of v7.6+. If doubt, rely on what's said for Linux! * On Solaris the name of the VTeX program (binary) is "vtexsun". With a future release of VTeX/Free, the program name will change to just "vtex" on all platforms. * Neither the Bibtex and Makeindex programs nor the font tools (pl2tf, vp2vf etc.) are provided for the Solaris platform (yet?). * It is recommended to run VTeX in "cache-only" mode, if the TeX input directories are mounted via NFS; otherwise VTeX may be somewhat slow. See chapter 2.4.4 [Path caching] of the VTeX/Free manual. Installing the Adobe Euro fonts -------------------------------- Unfortunately, many typefaces do not yet include the Euro symbol. As a substitute, you can take the symbol from a special font set, which provides "generic" Euro symbols in various styles. There exist several font sets; the one we recommend is "Adobe Euro". VTeX/Free already includes the macro package, the font metrics and a font map file for the "Adobe Euro" fonts. Due to legal reasons, the fonts are NOT distributed in conjunction with VTeX; instead, you have to download them from Adobe's FTP server -- note, however, that this is for free, and we strongly recommend to install these fonts! Obtain the following file via the internet: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/type/win/all/eurofont.exe or ftp://ftp-pac.adobe.com/pub/adobe/type/win/all/eurofont.exe This is a self-extracting archive for DOS/Win, which can also be unpacked using unzip. Copy all files of type .pfb from the subdirectory "eurofont" of the archive to the directory "texmf/fonts/type1/adobe/eurofont" of your VTeX system, and rename them as follows: _1______.PFB -> zpeurs.pfb _1B_____.PFB -> zpeubs.pfb _1I_____.PFB -> zpeuris.pfb _1BI____.PFB -> zpeubis.pfb _2______.PFB -> zpeurt.pfb _2B_____.PFB -> zpeubt.pfb _2I_____.PFB -> zpeurit.pfb _2BI____.PFB -> zpeubit.pfb _3______.PFB -> zpeur.pfb _3B_____.PFB -> zpeub.pfb _3I_____.PFB -> zpeuri.pfb _3BI____.PFB -> zpeubi.pfb The Euro fonts can be used with LaTeX through the "eurosans" package, which is documented in the file texmf/doc/latex/eurosans/README.eurosans Support ------- The NTG hosts a mailing list that can be used both to ask questions and to report bugs in the software and/or installation. The list is run by Majordomo, so to subscribe send a message to with the following line in the body subscribe ntg-vtex The mailing list itself can be reached as Legal stuff ----------- MicroPress and VTeX are trademarks of MicroPress, Inc. The MicroPress' components of the VTeX/Lnx distribution are Copyright (C) 1998-2002 by MicroPress Inc. The MicroPress' components of the VTeX/Lnx distribution are free for personal use, subject to the following restriction: You must obtain a permission from either MicroPress Inc or Walter Schmidt, if you intend to redistribute VTeX/Free on a permanent media (CD), or host it on a Web site other than by mirroring the official distribution. Adobe, Acrobat and PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. == finis