miktex-tools — experimental TeX additions
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
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
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 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.
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
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.
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:
add a new check box: Install package in /usr/share/miktex-texmf
A password dialog pops up, if the user has chosen to
install the package in the /usr/
directory.
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.