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Bill Ziemer - Problems Installing Webwork 1.6

Bill Ziemer - Problems Installing Webwork 1.6

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicProblems Installing Webwork 1.6 topic started 3/13/2001; 7:42:41 PM
last post 3/20/2001; 9:02:39 AM
userBill Ziemer - Problems Installing Webwork 1.6  blueArrow
3/13/2001; 7:42:41 PM (reads: 1663, responses: 4)
I had a working version of webworks that was destroyed by the owner of the machine. I have my own hardware now, and need to install webwork. I remember previous posts on similar topics, but they are gone now.

2 problems: 1)tth is not installed. specifically /var/www/webwork/system/scripts/tth does not exist. Looking at the notes I wrote for the previous installation, it just installed itself. Should it have still? 2)typeset problems. I have installed latex2html-2K.1beta, and it resides in /usr/local/bin and tests out fine. The input files are in the correct place. I get "Error: /var/www/webwork/system/cgi/cgi-scripts/processProblem8.pl

Can't rename /var/www/webwork/system/courses/demoCourse/html/tmp/l2h/1-54699/54699output.html" Checking the permissions, all seems right. The tmp directory is writable, and tmp/l2h/1-54699 is owned by wwserver.

Any ideas?

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userMichael Gage - Re: Problems Installing Webwork 1.6  blueArrow
3/13/2001; 8:25:07 PM (reads: 1975, responses: 0)
Hi Bill,

Glad you're back on line.

(tth problem)

The major changes in version 1.6.03 are

1. The tth binary file used for "formatted-text" output must now be downloaded directly from http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/ (It is free for educational institutions.)

2. The classlist routines are now more robust in that they check for illegal chacters (, = &) in all entries. For example, do not use these characters in a student's name in version 1.6.02

(see notes on the version updates at http://webwork.math.rochester.edu for more)

("can't rename error")

This sometimes occurs when l2hprecreate (or anything which uses latex2HTML and typeset mode) quits prematurely. It leaves a file which for some reason it can't then modify. If you delete the entire directory /var/www/webwork/system/courses/demoCourse/html/tmp/l2h/1-54699/ then latex2HTML should be able to create the file and the error will disappear.

Once you get tth installed then switching to "formatted-text" mode should also get rid of the error. The error is only associated with the "typeset" mode which uses latex2HTML.

-- Mike

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userBill Ziemer - Re: Problems Installing Webwork 1.6  blueArrow
3/19/2001; 7:10:39 PM (reads: 1946, responses: 0)
Great! I compiled tth and copied to the scripts directory, all is fine with formatted text.

The comments made in the file "linuxredhat.html" concerning latex2html don't seem to apply anymore. The file latex2html.conf no longer exists, latex2html has a GNU like install now (./configure, make, make test, make install). I changed the variable $PK from 0 to 1 in the file prefs.pm before the make, and it worked. NOW, how do I get transparent images?

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Problems Installing Webwork 1.6  blueArrow
3/19/2001; 10:13:35 PM (reads: 1869, responses: 0)
I assume you are using pngs, not gifs. There used to be a problem displaying transparent pngs. Maybe it is still a problem. Here is an old email about this from the latex2html archive.

From: Marek Rouchal Subject: [l2h] Re: Problems in PNG generation Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 01:19:21 -0700

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Ross Moore wrote:

> > The new problem is that the PNG has a gray background, while the GIF is > > transparent. Of course I use the same pstoimg routine, just changing the > > configuration file (99.2 revision 1.29) > > > > ==> Is that grey background with PNG a bug, or a "feature"? > > The fact that it is grey is a "feature". > That fact that it is not also transparent is either a "bug" > or a configuration error. I don't know which, sorry.

It is definitely a bug in Netscape: The PNG is created "transparent", but there is -- AFAIK -- currently no browser that is capable of displaying the transparency (so-called alpha-channel) of PNGs correctly. Does anyone know about a browser that does not have this problem?

> There is (usually) no such problem with .gif images, as there are > reliable routines to determine which color is the background, > in order to set it to be transparent.

The algorithm is supposed to be the same for ppmtogif and pnmtopng. The problem is that bowsers display the gray background color instead of recognizing that it should be 100% transparent.

Nothing we can do about that at the moment... :-(

Cheers,

Marek

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Problems Installing Webwork 1.6  blueArrow
3/20/2001; 9:02:39 AM (reads: 1889, responses: 0)
Here is an recent email about transparent pngs. It looks like things haven't changed.

Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 08:31:48 +1100 (EST)

> Dear Sirs, > > using the new latex2html-2K.1beta package, I realized, that now png's are > used for mathematical formulas instead of gif's.

Use of png images is the default for licensing reasons. You can easily configure, at installation time, to use .gif images instead. See the installation instructions for how to do this.

 

> But, transparent png's doesn't appear (independent on the -white option) - > the formulas are now always gray.

Not all browsers display transparency in .png images. First you should determine whether this is the problem by viewing in other browsers.

> How can be solved the problem?

The lack of support for transparency in browsers is annoying, but beyond our control. If your documents always have the same colour for the background (e.g. white) then ensure that you always make the images with a white background:

usepackage{color}pagecolor{white}

I have a set of PNG icons that have been edited to have a white background. This is quite easy to do with standard graphics software.

 

Hope this helps,

Ross Moore

 

> Yours, > Mathias > > -- > Mathias Kortke > email: kortke@iee.et.tu-dresden.de > > _______________________________________________ > latex2html mailing list > latex2html@tug.org > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html

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