[R] Rd2dvi problem.

[Prof Brian Ripley]

R_LATEXCMD is defined in R_HOME/etc/Renviron (sourced by R CMD), and 
conditionally re-defined in Rd2dvi.

On a sub-architecture build such as the CRAN MacOS distribution that will 
be R_HOME/etc/<arch>/Renviron, and on that distribution it is defined as 
'false'.  So you do need to define to a proper value in your environment, 
e.g. put R_LATEXCMD=latex in your ~/.Renviron file.

It might be worth discussing on R-sig-mac why the default is not 'latex'.
This is what is done on Windows, another system on which a TeX 
installation is optional.

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Rolf Turner wrote:

>
> If I execute
>
> 	R CMD Rd2dvi foo.Rd
>
> I get messages of the form:
>
> Converting Rd files to LaTeX ...
> foo.Rd
> Creating dvi output from LaTeX ...
> Saving output to 'foo.dvi' ...
> cp: .Rd2dvi4366/Rd2.dvi: No such file or directory
> Done
> xdvi-xaw: Fatal error: foo.dvi: No such file.
>
> Indeed if I add the --no-clean flag and then cd to the .Rd2dvi<whatever>
> directory, I find that there is no Rd2.dvi file there.  There *are*
> files Rd2.tex and Rd2.tex.pre present.  And moreover if I execute
>
> 	latex Rd2
>
> I get a perfectly acceptable Rd2.dvi file.
>
> I don't find a file ``foo.dvi'' anywhere.
>
> Note that ``R CMD Rd2dvi --pdf foo.Rd'' works seamlessly and produces foo.pdf
> as expected.
>
> When I look at the sh code in Rd2dvi I get the impression that ``R_LATEXCMD''
> is defined only when the --pdf flag is on, and it seems that this is what is
> or should be used to do the actual latex processing.  The comments at the
> point where the latex processing looks like it is taking place refer to
> ``R_LATEXCMD'' being ***re*** defined for --pdf, but as far as I can the
> only place where it is defined at all is for the --pdf case.  But I could be
> wrong since I don't really understand what is going on here.
>
> I'm sure that R CMD Rd2dvi (without the --pdf flag) worked for me in the 
> past.
> Something seems to have changed as consequence of an upgrade.   Has a bug 
> crept
> into R CMD Rd2dvi or is there something weird about my system? I'm currently
> using R 2.8.0; complete session information is:
>
> R version 2.8.0 (2008-10-20)
> i386-apple-darwin8.11.1
>
> locale:
> C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] datasets  utils     stats     graphics  grDevices methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] misc_0.0-9     fortunes_1.3-5 MASS_7.2-44
>
> Can anyone suggest where to start looking for the source of my problem?
>
> Thanks.
>
> 	cheers,
>
> 		Rolf Turner
>
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595