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The following question has to do with installation of the MaTeX package to Mathematica, and the difficulties I encounter in making it compatible with Inkscape’s Textext (LaTeX addon).

I first summarize my problem in Long story short (I have the detailed series of events in Long story). I then present my questions in Questions and supply some additional information regarding versions of the various programs in Supplementary Information.

Long story short

I am having issues with using both Textext add-on in Inkscape and MaTeX package in Wolfram's Mathematica. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing all related Inkscape programs but nothing seems to change.

Long story

I am using Inkscape to produce figures with LaTeX code (using textext according to this guide https://people.orie.cornell.edu/jmd388/design/guides/textext.pdf). I have previously installed Textext, and Inkscape was working well – allowing me to include LaTeX text in my figures.

I am also using Wolfram Mathematica. To include LaTeX text in Mathematica I needed to install the MaTeX package (from here https://github.com/szhorvat/MaTeX). However, once I did this, Textext stopped working.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled all inkscape’s related programs – pstoedit, ghostscript, GSview, ImageMagick, Textext and Inkscape itself – but still MaTeX wouldn’t work. Textext seems to be working now, but MaTeX does not.

The error Mathematica gives when running the MaTeX package is the following

MaTeX::gserr: Error while running Ghostscript.

After examinning this issue, I have realized that the problem might originate from the Ghostscript version. I have ran the following line in the command:

gswin64c.exe -o mt-gs.pdf -dNoOutputFonts -sDEVICE=pdfwrite mt.pdf

and the outcome I obtain is

**** Could not open temporary file '' ****Unable to open the initial device, quitting.

But when I only put 

gswin64c.exe -o mt-gs.pdf -dNoOutputFonts mt.pdf

Ghostscript seems to operate (that is, a pdf window pops-up and immediately closes).

Additionally, when I try to run GS on a different pdf file, I get the following error

Could not open the scratch file encoded_file_ptr_0.
+ c:\users\cjl\artifex\gs-release'9.21\ghostpdl-9.21\base\gdevp14.c:6044: gs_pdf14_devide_push<>: Fatal
GPL Ghostscript 9.21: Unrecoverable error, exit code 255

where the same file works on a different computer's GS (so the file should be OK).

Overall, I cannot use MaTeX at the moment since I get this error, which forces me to produce figures in Mathematica and move them into Inkscape to include axis labels and other notations (such that the fonts are consistent).

Questions

  1. What is wrong with my Ghostscript? How can I fix it?
  2. Has anyone encountered such difficulties before (making Textext and MaTex packages work at the same time)?
  3. Does anyone have an idea of how to fix MaTeX/Textext such that both would work?

Supplementary information

Here are the specs of my OS, as well as the versions of the different involved programs:

  • Windows 7 64-bit OS.
  • Mathematica verion 11.1.1.0 for Windows 64-bit.
  • Inkscape version 0.48
  • Ghostscript version 9.21
  • pstoedit and importps version 3.7
  • ImageMagick version 7.0.7 - Q16
  • Textext version 0.4.4
  • MiKTeX 2.9 (updated today).

I would really appreciate any comments and ideas. Thanks in advance

user54011
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  • I just want to make it clear that this problem is not really related to either MaTeX or Mathematica. *"I needed to install the MaTeX package ... once I did this, Textext stopped working."* ← MaTeX consists of a bunch of text/source files confined to Mathematica's configuration directory. Installing it cannot break another program. MaTeX does require certain LaTeX packages to work (such as `standalone`). Installing new LaTeX packages could conceivably break a program that relies on LaTeX (such as textext). – Szabolcs Sep 19 '17 at 08:36
  • Furthermore, the fact that Ghostscript fails to process PDF files on your computer *even when run independently of MaTeX* shows that the failure happens in Ghostscript, not in MaTeX. – Szabolcs Sep 19 '17 at 08:38
  • MaTeX 1.7.2 is released now. It will report Ghostscript-related errors in more detail, to make debugging easier. – Szabolcs Sep 19 '17 at 14:25
  • I have updated MaTeX to the current 1.7.2 version. Now the error I get is: `MaTeX: Error while running Ghostscript. GPL Ghostscript 9.21 (2017-03-16) Copyright (C) 2017 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved. This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details. **** Unable to open the initial device, quitting. GPL Ghostscript 9.21: **** Could not open temporary file ''`. I think this is what we expected, right? – user54011 Sep 20 '17 at 07:13

1 Answers1

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There is nothing wrong with your Ghostscript command, but the pdfwrite device requires the ability to write temporary files to the system temporary directory. (other devices such as the default display device do not always require the ability to write temporary files)

The empty filename is suspicious in the error, that should not be possible.

There is clearly some kind of problem because the file 'encoded_file_ptr.0' couldn't be created either apparently, and that's a valid filename.

I'd have to guess at some kind of permissions problem. I note that you are running a Windows Ghostscript, are you running this under some kind of Linux-alike ? I'd be suspicious that there is some kind of permissions or access problem on the temp partition if so.

Have you tried running Ghostscript from the WIndows command shell ?

KenS
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  • Thanks for you comment. I have previously run GS from the cmd of windows. I have tried to start cmd as administrator and run GS, but I still get the same errors. – user54011 Sep 18 '17 at 11:28
  • Are you in a position to build a debug version of Ghostscript and debug it ? I can tell you where to set a breakpoint, and what I would like to see is the call stack at that point. I am unable to reproduce this locally..... – KenS Sep 18 '17 at 15:08
  • You will have to be very specific as I am new to this. How do I build a debug version? And where do you want me to set a break-point? :-) – user54011 Sep 18 '17 at 15:48
  • Umm, you would need a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition (which is free) and the current Ghostscript source code, for which you would need to use Git to pull a copy from our Git repository. Or you can go here: http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git;a=summary and pull a snapshot from one of the commits. Then from Visual Studio you open the /ghostpdl/windows/ghostpdl.sln project, select 'Debug' and 'x64' from the configuration manager and select 'Build'. If you aren't already a Windows developer I can quite understand that you may feel this is too much effort. – KenS Sep 19 '17 at 10:18
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    Looking at a (very) old answer, it may be that you have no temporary directory. If you open a Windows command shell and do ECHO %TEMP% what do you get ? – KenS Sep 19 '17 at 10:22
  • When I type `ECHO %TEMP%` I get a list of directories: a miktex\bin directory, gs9.21\lib, gs9.21\bin, OmageMagick-7.0.4+Q16, and Ghostgum\pstoedit. Is this what you expected? – user54011 Sep 20 '17 at 06:38
  • @user54011 That doesn't look right. It should be something like `C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Temp` (depending on your version of Windows). Did you edit your `TEMP` variable instead of `PATH`? – Szabolcs Sep 20 '17 at 07:42
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    Bulzai - I just changed the TEMP variable back and now MaTeX is working just fine! Thanks so much!!! – user54011 Sep 20 '17 at 08:20