B.3 Installation Trouble

B.3.1 I could not install the precompiled RPM binaries

Note that the binaries require RPM version 3.

B.3.2 I just get `LaTeX found no preview images'.

The reason for this is that LaTeX found no preview images in the document in question.

One reason might be that there are no previews to be seen. If you have not used preview-latex before, you might not know its manner of operation. One sure-fire way to test if you just have a document where no previews are to be found is to use the provided example document circ.tex (you will have to copy it to some directory where you have write permissions). If the symptom persists, you have a problem, and the problem is most likely a LaTeX problem. Here are possible reasons:

Incompatible RPM installation

The RPM packages are intended to run on a Redhat system. So the TeX files, provided by package preview-latex-common go into /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview and /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/styles/preview. If for your system the TeX files are in different places you have to set appropriate links.

Another possibility is to get the tar archive, edit the preview-latex.spec accordingly, repack and then use the appropriate `rpm' command for building RPMs from a tar archive. If this works, please don't forget to send us the spec file, so that we may be able to help others with your platform.

Filename database not updated

Various TeX distributions have their own ways of knowing where the files are without actually searching directories. The normal preview-latex installation should detect common tools for that purpose and use them. If this goes wrong, or if the files get installed into a place where they are not looked for, the LaTeX run will fail.

An incomplete manual installation

This should not happen if you followed installation instructions. Unfortunately, people know better all the time. If only preview.sty gets installed without a set of supplementary files also in the latex subdirectory, preview-latex runs will not generate any errors, but they will not produce any previews, either.

An outdated preview installation

The preview.sty package is useful for more than just preview-latex. For example, it is part of TeXlive. So you have to make sure that preview-latex does not get to work with outdated style and configuration files: some newer features will not work with older TeX style files, and really old files will make preview-latex fail completely. There usual is a local texmf tree, or even a user-specific tree that are searched before the default tree. Make sure that the first version of those files that gets found is the correct one.

B.3.3 I have problems with the XEmacs installation

Please note that the XEmacs installation is different, since XEmacs has a package system that gets used here. Please make sure that you read and follow the installation instructions for XEmacs.

The XEmacs Lisp files provided by the preview-latex-xemacs RPM package are in XEmacs package format and will be installed in /usr/lib/xemacs/site-packages. If on your system the Lisp files are in different places, you have to set appropriate links.

Alternatively you could install them locally in your home directory either in ~/.xemacs (for XEmacs version below 21.4.x) or in ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages (for versions starting with 21.4).

B.3.4 After installation of the XEmacs RPM package, AUCTeX does not work

Most likely you installed the RPM files and you have an XEmacs version which uses a different architecture of directories, (SuSE is known to have a no standard architecture, besides it changes it from SuSE version to SuSE version). Additionally you have set in your init file an invocation of preview-latex according to the installation instructions in Installation.

Since those demand the loading of preview-latex when entering an AUCTeX mode, but the load fails because of preview-latex being in a different directory, this will make turning on an AUCTeX mode fail. Please notice that the installation instructions for Emacs and XEmacs differ. Please follow the respective installation instructions to the letter unless you know perfectly what you are doing.