[20703] in Athena Bugs
Re: latex2html in the infoagents locker
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Wed Sep 11 17:58:13 2002
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 17:58:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Nick White <nickw@MIT.EDU>
cc: <bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU>, <gildea@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30L.0207081455290.13333-100000@cheshire-cat.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0209111743430.2731-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I finally got a chance to clean up my "infoagents things to do" list and
downloaded a better version of latex2html. Unfortunately the configuration
mechanism has completely changed since our antiquated version. One of the
reasons I have been reluctant to upgrade it is that moving Unix programs
to infoagents is never as easy as any other installation in the Unix
world. The problem is that all programs seem to want to put things in
/usr/lib or /usr/local/lib or some such, and an infoagents program
basically needs to be self-contained in the locker unless special measures
are taken.
There is surely a way to make latex2html understand that its support files
are not somewhere up in /usr but right there in the same tree under the
main script. It's just going to take me a little while to apply the right
size sledgehammer. The obvious options for 'configure' are not doing the
obvious thing - probably because this is a Perl program, not a big hunk of
C source, and using the 'configure'/'make' mechanism for it may be a bad
fit in the first place.
Point is, I am indeed finally working on doing this, but have hit
complications. Further bulletins as events warrant. Meanwhile, the
locker still contains the 1996 version.
P.S. When I do get the new version working, will there be any reason to
keep the old one around? Given the simplicity of its use/arguments I
assume it is thoroughly backwards compatible. Unless someone says
otherwise, the 2002 version will replace the 1996 version completely.
- Todd
