ProTeXt/MikTeX: ps2pdf does not work

Hi,

I have a problem with ps2pdf in command line usage. I have installed MikTeX via the ProTeXt distribution system on Windows XP. While LaTeX seems to work as it should the ps2pdf tool doesn't. Even pdflatex works nominal; however I do not like it for papers with figures since it requires to convert all the figures to pdf, and it apparently doesn't work properly for figures with dots (e.g. a plot of a particle cloud).

Instead of creating a PDF from a PS file I only get the message that some compatibility check file has been created and deleted again:

Lösche C:\_.at
1 Datei gelöscht
Lösche C:\_.at2
1 Datei gelöscht

(German for "Deleting C:_\.at... 1 File deleted")

(in de.comp.text.tex someone told me that this is normal; however no-one could help me yet with the problem itself.)

The similar tool pstopdf even creates an error message because some of its subsequent scripts tries to call an executable in a folder named MIKTEX~1.7/foo although the current version (and thus the folder name) is 2.7:

C:/PROGRA~1/MIKTEX~1.7/scripts/context/ruby/pstopdf.rb:23:in `require': no such
file to load -- base/switch (LoadError)
from C:/PROGRA~1/MIKTEX~1.7/scripts/context/ruby/pstopdf.rb:23

However, I didn't yet find the file where all the paths are contained, and I'am wondering why nobody had noticed the error since MikTeX 1.8. I didn't make any changes to the installation but left everything as default. Does anyone confirm that the current PT/MT distribution is obviously buggy?

I'm considering now to uninstall the complete stuff and to try out TeXlive instead. Or at least to erase the ghostscript-related stuff and install Ghostscript independently (although exactly this is not recommended).

Does anyone have suggestions other than nuking ProTeXt/MikTeX from my harddisk? If not, does TeXlive have advantages against MikTeX (TeXlive is the preferred distribution on Linux, as I've been told) that would justify a change anyway?

Ingo
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Recommendations for updating/replacing distribution?
    ... Your choice is basically between MiKTeX 2.7 and TeXLive 2008. ... that makes it hard to keep track of packages ... Manual changes in the installation tree are the shortest way to end up ... the distribution would let you specify ...
    (comp.text.tex)
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    ... this work on a server situation? ... know to tell the installers how to configure either distribution so that ... installation that includes everything you want people to have access ... This is why I asked originally about MikTeX vs. TeX Live, ...
    (comp.text.tex)
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    (comp.text.tex)
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