I apologize for restarting this old discussion thread, but it seems to be the easiest way to ask my question. I would like to try installing KMyMoney 0.9-6, which is still in the /contrib-2008/ repository, but I thought it would be wise to ask you Pardus gurus if this is safe.

In principle, it seems like a bad idea to mix packages from the 2008 repos and the 2009 repos. But in practice has anyone tried something like this? If so, what were the results? Are any of you using KMyMoney or even GnuCash in Pardus 2009?

I installed HomeBank and began experimenting with it. (I was willing to use it temporarily until the KDE 4 version of KMyMoney is ready). However, I was discouraged to learn that HomeBank does not allow the possibility of recording split transactions ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/homebank/+bug/140504 ). In 2008, HomeBank's developer wrote that he will probably implement it in the 4.1 release:

https://answers.launchpad.net/homebank/+question/53064

This is a feature I really need, so I don't think HomeBank will be a suitable replacement.

It would be nice if Pardus 2009 had more finance / checkbook applications available, such as Skrooge, GnuCash or a modified version of KMyMoney (i.e., an older version packaged with the necessary KDE 3 libraries so that it could run under KDE 4). This is one area where the Pardus repos are weak (in my opinion).

Thanks for any advice,
=david

Hi again, Ronald,

Just a few more suggestions about things you can try before I give up on this. (You might have seen and/or tried these already). I have done more searching and found some interesting tidbits. However, the basic problem (for me, at least) is that one needs in-depth, technical knowledge of both TeX's and LyX's guts to understand what is going wrong. I have neither, unfortunately ...

There is an interesting thread on the Arch Linux Forums you might read:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=83276
"[Solved] Lyx: pdf preview and pdf generation doesn't work."
(From the Arch Linux User Forums)
User "bender02" offers a concise explanation of how TeX finds available fonts (in post #6).

One of the suggestions is to run texhash to help TeX know where to look for fonts. (You must do this as root). When I did it on my system, I got the following output:


Also, you might run the two commands below and see how my output compares to yours:


I learned there is an easier way to access the TeX / LaTeX log file. Rather than navigating to the /tmp directory, just go to LyX's main menu and choose Document > LaTeX Log.

At this point, I have run out of ideas. If running texhash doesn't fix the problem, and you have both pdflatex and the ecbx1000.tfm font installed, my recommendation is for you to ask on a LyX-specific forum. I did see that there are several LyX mailing lists you could try:

http://www.lyx.org/MailingLists

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to help you more with this. I've learned some useful things about LyX but its inner workings remain a Great Mystery to me. If you're able to solve the problem, I'd be very interested in hearing what the fix was.

With best wishes,
=david

 

Hi again, Ronald,

Thanks to Google and some semi-educated guesses  , I found some additional info which might be useful. I think the component you might be missing is the cmsuper font package (which contains Type 1 fonts converted from METAFONT fonts). I am fairly certain that it is part of TeX Live; in PCLinuxOS, the subpackage is named texlive-texmf-cmsuper but I do not know what it is called in Pardus. (The Pardus developers seem to have "bundled" TeX Live in a slightly different way). I did a PiSi search of my installed packages, but did not find anything called "cmsuper" or "cm-super."

My hunch is that it might be included in one of these two packages:

texlive-fontsrecommended
texlive-fontsextra

So you might check to see if both of those packages are installed on your system.

The other useful tip I found is where LyX keeps a log of its activity. (LyX is an offshot of TeX / LaTeX, and the TeX program is meticulous about keeping track of what it does). On my system, this log can be read in the following directory:

/tmp/lyx_tmpdir.MT1080/lyx_tmpbuf0/

LyX generates a file called [filename].log when you compile your source file and try to generate either a DVI or a PDF. Even if LyX encounters an error and is unable to create a DVI / PDF, it will nonetheless create this .log file which will include some details about the error(s). You can open up the .log file and view it with KWrite (or any text editor).

So my suggestion is to start LyX and attempt to produce a PDF file from your source. Immediately afterwards, navigate to that temporary directory and look at the .log file that LyX created. Even if the PDF creation is unsuccesful, TeX should log some sort of info about why it failed.

Even if I cannot understand the error message, you now know where to look for it and can show it to a more knowledgeable LyX user. HTH,

=david 

P.S.
By installing the cmsuper package in PCLinuxOS, I was able to get LyX to successfully produce PDFs. I looked at the .log file and read that the error was because TeX was unable to find the cmsuper fonts. I hope your PDF issue can be solved just as easily.

Here are the configuration screenshots for PCLinuxOS 2009 (with LyX 1.6.4.1).

Hi, Ronald,

Sorry I haven't been able to help you very well. I hope that a knowledgeable LyX user from one of those forums will be able to point you in the direction of a solution.

Here are a few more pieces of evidence which might help you with troubleshooting. I also have LyX installed in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and in PCLinuxOS 2009, and I looked at their settings:

Ubuntu:
LyX ver. 1.5.3
DVI display works: with Evince (although the viewer is configured as "xdg-open")
PDF display works: with Evince (although configured as "xdg-open")
TeX encoding = T1

PCLinuxOS:
LyX ver. 1.6.4.1
DVI display works: with xdvik (viewer configured as "xdvi")
PDF display does not work: Produces error message about "File [X] does not exist".  (Current viewer configuration is "kpdf")
TeX encoding = T1

(I will attach screenshots of those configuration settings).

As a last resort, another thing you might try (you may have done this already) is to completely uninstall LyX and then reinstall the program. This technique has sometimes worked for me when an application is behaving strangely and I haven't been able to figure out what's causing the problem.

If you solve the problem, please post back and let us know how you did it. Good luck,
=david

Hi, Ronald,

Just another thought ... If your problem is possibly related to missing fonts, it occurred to me that it might be helpful for you to see which fonts I have installed on my system. (I did a PiSi search from the command line; with luck, this lists everything).



   

                                                                            

Also, I noticed that the default TeX encoding is for T1 fonts (under Preferences > Output > LaTeX > TeX encoding: ), so here's what a PiSi search for "T1" turned up on my system:


Maybe you are missing t1utils and/or ttf2pt1? Just a stab in the dark ...


HTH, =david

Hi, Ronald,

You're very welcome. Hmm ... I agree that those results look strange. I think that James T's hunch about missing fonts may be correct.

I will try investigating further this evening to see if I stumble upon something. However, since my LyX knowledge is extremely basic, in the meantime I suggest that you try asking in two LyX-specific user forums. Hopefully, someone more familiar with LyX can tell you what's going wrong:

http://n2.nabble.com/LyX-f475766.html
LyX Forum

http://www.latex-community.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=19
LaTeX Community Forum -- LyX Subforum

(You'll first need to register with the LaTeX Community Forum [which is a pretty friendly place, I've used it before]. I'm not sure about the LyX Forum, as I haven't ever tried it).

I've seen occasional LyX-related questions posted to the comp.text.tex Usenet newgroup, but I think you would have better luck with the Web-based forums.

With best wishes,
=david

Hi, superleste (Ronald),

Welcome to the Pardus Forums! I am not a LyX user (I use LaTeX instead), so I only know enough about LyX to get myself in trouble. However, I might have found a workaround for you to try.

I just installed LyX on my Pardus 2009, and it brought along the following dependencies with it: libXp; openmotif; aiksaurus; and xdvik. < Edit: > (I should mention that I had previously installed TeX Live, which includes base components such as tex, latex, etc. I suspect that LyX also requires these as dependencies, so it's likely that your download of LyX and related packages would have been larger than mine).

I created a brief test document and tried to produce both a DVI and a PDF file. I included a few foreign-language diacritics (accute accent, circumflex accent, cedille, tilde).

The results: Pressing the "View DVI" button on the toolbar did produce output, but xdvik was very slow in appearing on the screen (it took maybe 1-1.5 minutes). Also, the foreign diacritics were missing from the DVI (I'm not sure why).

Pressing the "View PDF" button worked better for me. The file was displayed by Okular (which started up quickly) and all of the foreign diacritics displayed correctly.

You might try this suggestion and see if it will fix your problem. It will reconfigure LyX's preferences to use Okular to display DVIs:

Start up LyX and go to Tools > Preferences. A new window will open; in its left-hand pane, look for File Handling and then choose File formats. Then, in the right-hand window pane, look for the Format: box at the top of the window. It has a drop-down menu beside it; from there, choose DVI. In the Viewer: box, change the default xdvik to okular. Then click on the Save button.

In order to complete the configuration change, in LyX's main GUI window, go to Tools > Reconfigure. After doing this, you will see a dialog box that says your setup has been reconfigured and that you must close LyX and restart it for the changes to take effect.

I am attaching two screenshots which will show the configuration preferences better (I hope).

Interestingly enough, the default configuration for viewing PDFs is to use "xdg-open" rather than Okular. (I have not changed this in any way, and Okular opens with no problem).

Hope this helps and Good luck,
=david

P.S. to waf:

If I understand correctly, LyX is a stand-alone environment which uses LaTeX as its typesetting engine. The LyX GUI has its own built-in editor, so users do not need to install a separate editor such as Kile or Texmaker.  

Hi, Michiel,

Wow, thanks for building a .pisi package for Abiword. That was very kind of you. I had looked at the Wiki's instructions for building .pisi packages ( http://en.pardus-wiki.org/Pisi_Package ) but I didn't understand much of it. I have no previous experience with packaging and I believe this is above my skill level. In reality, it might not be that complex but it sure looks complicated.

I also like OOo Writer, but sometimes I prefer to use Abiword because it starts up faster on my (older) hardware and is more lightweight. If I try out your package, I'll report back on how it works on my system.

Thanks again.

< Edit: >

Michiel, many thanks for your time and expertise! I just installed your Abiword package and it seems to be working fine (although I obviously haven't had time to test it in depth). I'm attaching two screenshots of how it looks on my system. I'll let you know if I run into problems -- but don't worry, I won't expect you to fix them. 

Dank u wel,
=david 

Hi, Andreas and Michiel,

Thanks for both your replies!

@Andreas,

Thank you for clarifying that sudo pisi up -c system.base is not necessary after performing your very first update. (I thought I understood that correctly, and then when this PiSi problem occurred, I wasn't so sure anymore ...)

@Michiel,

Thank you for the comments about your experience(s) with PiSi's GUI vs. the CLI. This helps confirm that to avoid update errors, it's probably better to use the CLI.

Actually, what I'm considering is a compromise: to let the Package Manager's GUI notify me of pending updates and to read the package descriptions provided (I write down a list of package updates and their version numbers in a small spiral notebook, in case something causes a major problem); then to perform the update from the CLI.

I'm still enjoying Pardus 2009 very much, and spent about 90% of my computing time last week booted into it. Currently the two applications I miss are Abiword (a little bit) and KMyMoney (a lot). The KMyMoney developers are working on a KDE 4.x version of the program, but they don't yet have a firm release date. Meanwhile I have installed HomeBank and taken a look at it, but have not created an account and begun entering checkbook transactions. I've read in another forum that Skrooge is a good alternative to KMM, but I didn't find it in the Pardus repos.

Hi, trixon,

Thanks for your prompt reply and the quoted explanation. I'm relieved to hear that this is a non-problem. I will leave my "corrupt" packages alone, and wait to see what happens with the next round of updates.

With best wishes,
=david

Hi, Andreas,

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that I did issue that command sudo pisi up -c system.base after I finished with my new installation, and before I made the very first update. (atolboo warned me that I needed to do that).

Must I issue the command sudo pisi up -c system.base before every update? Or is it required only before the very first update performed on a freshly installed system?

Thanks for any clarification.

Hi,

To make a long story short, the past two days I've been trying to fix what I think is a PiSi-GUI-related problem. I solved the problem by using pisi from the command line, but I am confused as to why the GUI failed but the Terminal worked.

I had done two previous updates without any problem. Then PiSi notified me that there were 79 upgradable packages (ca. 138 MB in size). The largest was the qt-doc package (79.5 MB); I was using the default Turkish repositories. I made 4-5 attempts with the package manager's GUI to do the update; every time, the download would reach the 75-76% completion range, and then freeze.

I tried the steps suggested here in the forum of using #pisi clean, #pisi delete-cache and #pisi rebuild-db before I would try updating via the GUI again. But that didn't help.

Next, I decided to remove the Turkish repos and add the two Dutch (.nl) repositories in their place. Twice I tried peforming the update via PiSi's GUI, and both times it froze at exactly the same 75-76% download stage.

Finally, I was frustrated enough to experiment with using pisi from the command line. I found #pisi upgrade mentioned in the Wiki. To my surprise, the update worked this time! No freezing, no stalling. (I am still using the Dutch repos).

Does anyone have an idea about why this happened? Might the PiSi GUI have frozen because of the large package size? Is this a fairly common occurrence, or was this a fluke? Do most of you use PiSi via its GUI, or from the Terminal?

Thanks for any advice / suggestions,
=david

Hi,

While attempting to solve a PiSi-related problem last night, I tried several suggestions which I saw here in the User Forum. One suggestion involved using the command # pisi check. When I ran that command (which took some time to finish), PiSi reported that I have 10 corrupt packages.

I have searched the forum but I could not find any mention of how to solve this situation. Is the correct solution to uninstall the corrupt packages and then immediately reinstall them?

The reason I'm asking is that 5 of the corrupt packages are components of TeX Live (yet TeX Live is currently working fine for me). If I uninstall these packages, won't they pull along other TeX Live dependencies with them?

TeX Live was a large download and I would like to avoid uninstalling / reinstalling it, if possible ...

Thanks for any advice you might have.

I first heard about Pardus via the PCLinuxOS User Forums; it has a subsection on "Software Discussion." A couple of people mentioned their positive experience with Pardus and noted that it has one of the best KDE 4 implementations they had seen.

I went to DistroWatch and searched for reviews on Pardus. The linked reviews at DW -- and Caitlyn's article in particular -- convinced me to try it myself. Had it not been for DW, I would not likely have installed Pardus.

Pardus has surprised the heck out of me; I hope it will continue to improve and become more widely known. Based on my experience so far, it is on a par with some of the larger distros known for being "newb-friendly," such as Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mint and Mepis.