** Using WeBWorK **

I'm having trouble getting images to include properly in hardcopies. I'm using WeBWorK 2.x out of HEAD, last updated probably a week or so ago. The following code

  ...
  BEGIN_TEXT
  An image: \{ image('testgr.gif') \}
  ...
  END_TEXT

where the figure "testgr.gif" is in the same directory as the problem.pg file, displays fine on-line, but fails when trying to generate a hardcopy. It returns no error messages, but includes the text

  \{ \par  {\bf    image( 'testgr.gif' )  } \par \}

in the TeX output (rather than including the image, which was my intent). This, of course, isn't quite what I intended. Am I doing something obviously wrong here? I would swear that an identical problem worked fine last semester.

Thanks,
Gavin

<| Post or View Comments |>

Try downloading a copy of the TeX version of the hardcopy (as opposed to PDF) and troubleshoot it using your TeX editor. (You'll need to grab a copy of the .gif image as well.)

Some pdflatex translators might not handle the .gif image (as opposed to .png image) but this should be come clear if you try to process the TeX output of the webwork set by hand.

-- Mike

<| Post or View Comments |>

Thanks. The TeX output includes, verbatim, the code I reproduced above. It appears (to me, for whatever that's worth) that the image() macro isn't being correctly translated into some sort of \includegraphics TeX command in the TeX output. It does, however, appear to deal fine with an included image using insertGraph. That is, something like

  $gr = init_graph(...)
  ...
  BEGIN_TEXT
  \{ image( insertGraph($gr), 'tex_size'=>450 ) \}
  END_TEXT

Interestingly, with the static image, if I put the image() call outside of the BEGIN_TEXT/END_TEXT structure, the hardcopy generator fails with an error about not being able to generate a png file. I don't know if this is related or not to the other error, but in any event we were using the same problem last semester and didn't see any errors of this type.

Thanks,
Gavin

<| Post or View Comments |>

I'm not 100% positive but I think these errors are related. (And the error message isn't getting through.) Also this comment Further, pdflatex cannot incorporate GIF files in a generated PDF, so any graphics must be available in PNG format.

from http://httpd.apache.org/docs-project/docsformat.html squares with my memory that pdflatex will not handle .gif files and therefore we first create a .png file and pass its address into the TeX version.

I'm not sure what happens if the .png file can't be created.

Caveat -- I'm doing this from memory -- I don't have the code in front of me right at the moment, so I could be way off base.

You might look at the TeX code of a problem that works, if you haven't already, that might give you a clue. I also suspect that a static .png file would work.

The code is somewhere in dangerousMacros.pl -- probably in the alias subroutine.

Hope this helps.

Take care,

Mike

<| Post or View Comments |>

The problem is probably in generating the .png file as Mike suggests, as the image() call (defined in PGbasicmacros.pl) calls alias() which is where the conversion will take place. Check the write permissions on the tmp directories (and make sure the main tmp directory is writable, since it may need to create a png directory there). Also check that your file conversion commands are properly configured in global.conf (in particular the externalGif2PngPath variable). If you can find the warning message, that should help.

Good luck.

Davide

<| Post or View Comments |>