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Charles Pastor - Problems with precreating

Charles Pastor - Problems with precreating

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicProblems with precreating topic started 9/10/2001; 10:20:17 AM
last post 9/14/2001; 10:57:02 AM
userCharles Pastor - Problems with precreating  blueArrow
9/10/2001; 10:20:17 AM (reads: 1720, responses: 4)
I am having difficulties with getting WeBWorK to precreate problem sets, or have them created on the fly, so they can be viewed in typeset mode. When a problem is viewed in typeset mode, the first converted piece of latex, for example, is replaced with 1#1. Similarly for the other latex pieces. Any suggestions for fixing this?

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Problems with precreating  blueArrow
9/10/2001; 2:09:10 PM (reads: 2036, responses: 0)
Assuming latex2html is installed and working properly, the most common cause for this error is that the path to certain required programs (e.g. latex) has not been provided to WeBWorK.

Near the bottom of the script .../courseScripts/displayMacros.pl you will find

 

sub makeL2H {



my ($TMPPROBDIR,$psvn) =@_;
$ENV{'PATH'} .= ':/usr/local/bin';
[...]
system("/usr/local/bin/latex2html ...

Edit $ENV{'PATH'} adding the necessary path(s). For most systems this should be set to ':/usr/bin' or ':/usr/local/bin' or maybe ':/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin'. Also edit the call to latex2html if necessary.

Finally check the error logs (both apache's and WeBWorK's) to see what went wrong. If you are still having problems, we can provide more detailed debugging information, but the above solves 90% of the problems (see "WW setup problem", http://webhost.math.rochester.edu/webworkdocs/discuss/msgReader$578 , for a related problem).

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Problems with precreating  blueArrow
9/10/2001; 6:12:36 PM (reads: 2025, responses: 0)
I checked displayMacros.pl and change the line system("/usr/local/bin/latex2html -no_math -init_file ${Global::mainDirectory}latex2html.init.98.1 ... to system("/usr/local/bin/latex2html -init_file ${Global::mainDirectory}latex2html.init.98.1 .... This seems to have fixed the problem. Does the option "-no_math" need to be there for some reason? Thanks for your help.

-- Charles Pastor

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userArnold K. Pizer - Re: Problems with precreating  blueArrow
9/10/2001; 6:22:36 PM (reads: 2070, responses: 0)
I do not think this is what you want to do. Your problem is that the required gifs or pngs are not being created.

Look at the documentation for LaTeX2html. The option no_math means that LateX2html "always generates an image of the whole expression/environment." If no_math is not involked, simple expressions like exponents will be expressed in standard html. This is fine for very simple expressions, but (even if you have LaTex2html functioning properly), this will not look good for complicated expressions.

In your case where the images are not being created, complicated expressiond will not be displayed.

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userCharles Pastor - Re: Problems with precreating  blueArrow
9/14/2001; 10:57:02 AM (reads: 1975, responses: 0)
The problem has been solved! The problem was that both latex and latex2html had to be reconfigured on our web server. Apparently, WeBWorK was the first program on the server that required these programs. Thank you for the helpful suggestions.

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