Name

miktex-tools — experimental TeX additions

Description

MiKTeX Tools should be regarded as an addition to the host TeX system installed on your system.

The following utilities are included:

  • miktex-pdftex: MiKTeX implementation of the pdfTeX engine

  • mpm: MiKTeX Package Manager

  • mthelp: MiKTeX Help Utility

System-wide configuration

In order to configure MiKTeX Tools for your system, you run the MiKTeX configuration utility (initexmf) and the MiKTeX package manager (mpm):

sudo initexmf --admin --configure
sudo mpm --admin --update-db

This is what happens:

  • The TEXMF trees of the host TeX system are collected; the information is written to /var/lib/miktex-texmf/miktex/config/miktexstartup.ini

  • the system-wide file name database is created

  • the package database is downloaded from the MiKTeX package repository

Per-user configuration

Once you have configured MiKTeX Tools for the system, each user should create the per-user file name database:

initexmf --update-fndb

Without this step, the on-the-fly package installer will not work.

MiKTeX-pdfTeX

MiKTeX-pdfTeX is an alternative pdfTeX engine. The engine features integrated package management, i.e., missing packages will be installed on the-fly (after confirmation).

You invoke MiKTeX-pdfTeX as follows:

miktex-pdftex --undump=latex sample2e

The --undump option must be used to specify the format. See the miktex-pdftex reference page, for more information.

If you prefer shortcuts, you can create symbolic links to the MiKTeX-pdfTeX engine:

mkdir ~/bin
cd ~/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/miktex-pdftex latex
ln -s /usr/bin/miktex-pdftex pdflatex
PATH=~/bin:$PATH

Then you can invoke the engine in the usual way:

pdflatex sample2e

Of course, you can replace ~/bin with a more suitable directory.

Using the MiKTeX package manager

MPM (MiKTeX Package Manager) was originally intended to be a tool for MiKTeX users. But the program can be helpful for users of other TeX systems too, because many of the MiKTeX packages are system-independent.

There are two variants of the package manager: GUI and console. Run

mpm

to start the GUI variant of the package manager. You will be presented with a list of packages.

The rest of this section describes the console variant of the package manager.

To list the contents of the package database, run

mpm --list

To get detailed information about a package, run

mpm --print-package-info=package

If you want to install a package, run

mpm --install=package

Using the mthelp utility

The mthelp utility can be used to lookup package documentation.

Run

mthelp package

to view an HTML page wich contains links to the documentation files of a package.

Caveats

The integrated package manager installs packages in the user home directory under ~/miktex-texmf/. A better approach would be to enhance the auto-install dialog box:

  1. add a new check box: Install package in /usr/share/miktex-texmf

  2. A password dialog pops up, if the user has chosen to install the package in the /usr/ directory.

  3. the package manager is run with root privileges, if the the user entered the root password.

This will be implemented in one of the next beta releases.

See also

initexmf(1), miktex-pdftex(1), mpm(1), mthelp(1)