[Rd] Windows vignettes, shQuote, texi2dvi

[Gabor Grothendieck]

From:   Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> 
> > I noticed a shQuote fix for Windows in the svn logs.
> > Just wanted to point out that this will favorably 
> > affect texi2dvi on Windows which previously used
> > UNIX quoting and so generated an incorrect Windows
> > command. (Note that texi2dvi is used when creating
> > vignettes.)
> > 
> > Another problem is that the recommended tex
> > distribution for Windows, fptex, does not have texi2dvi
> > in the first place. The alternative, MiKTeX, is harder
> > to install
> 
> I heared some people think so, but apparently it is not a big problem.

I installed both so I know from experience that MikTex was 
harder to install.   

The problem is that its a lot of work to set up a package
building environment on Windows. There are numerous systems to 
install, TeX, UNIX tools, perl, Microsoft Help plus path problems.   

MikTex is just one
more obstacle.  MikTex seems like its a slicker distribution
package so its too bad its more work to set up.  The main
problems with fptex are not configuration but that (1) the
package is so large that it takes a long time to download and
(2) its missing crucial elements, viz. texi2dvi.

> 
> 
> > than fptex but instructions are available
> > and it does have an equivalent to texi2dvi called texify.exe;
> > however, R still does not know about texify.exe 
> > resulting in additional installation hassles,
> > viz. setting the texi2dvi option or setting up a texi2dvi.bat
> > file yourself that calls texify.exe or just forgetting
> > about texi2dvi and manually running the necessary tex commands
> > when creating vignettes on Windows.
> 
> texi2dvi is also available in MikTeX, see package miktex-texinfo-bin.
> 
> See also ?texi2dvi in R to see how you can set something different, e.g. 
> "texify", which is explicitly given in the examples.
> 
> 
> 
> > There are also additional problems related to using the
> > perl package-building scripts in Windows. I can create the
> > zoo vignette using:
> > 
> > setwd("...whatever...")
> > Sweave("zoo.Rnw")
> > texi2dvi("zoo.tex")
> > 
> > provided I modify the source to texi2dvi to use the
> > appropriate quoting but even with that modification,
> > the perl package build scripts only build
> > the vignette as far as the zoo.tex file and I must
> > do the rest by hand so there is some problem with
> > the scripts or in how they interact with R.
> 
> Are you going to provide a patch?

I assume the shQuote change obviates the need for my kludge to
texi2dvi.   If it were not written in perl I would have looked
at the script part too but relearning perl provides too high 
an obstacle timewise.  It seems that the direction is to move
the scripts to R anyways so I assume perl will ultimately be 
eliminated from the R distribution simplifying this sort of 
maintenance.