mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Martin Costabel <address@hidden>]

Found it.

It is a weird bug in texmacs (so weird that is probably a feature, not a 
bug). I am cross-posting to texmacs-users so that we get experts' 
opinion about this, too.

I found it, because I was getting the same crash now on a newly 
installed machine, whereas I haven't ever seen it before.

Joe Corneli wrote:
> Hello --
>
> I tried to use Maxima in TeXmacs and got
> this (fatal) error.

> % texmacs &
> [1] 22569
> [Small03]%
> TeXmacs] Loading ecrm11 at 300 dpi
[etc]
> TeXmacs] Starting session 'default'
> TeXmacs] Launching 'maxima' via tm_maxima
> TeXmacs] Loading cmr10 at 600 dpi
>
> Fatal error: bad url in 'complete'
> See file   : url.cc

The reason for the crash is that the 'url' in question is empty. It is 
supposed to be the list of paths to the file maxima_toc.html. You do 
have this file, but texmacs does not see it, because it uses 'locate' to 
locate it, and your locate database was not updated after the 
installation of maxima.

To test this theory: Run "locate maxima_toc.html". My guess is that the 
output is empty, but that the file nevertheless exists at 
/sw/share/maxima/5.9.0/doc/html/maxima_toc.html.

So the remedy is simple: Run "sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb", wait 
10 minutes (could be faster) until it is finished, and all will be well.

This actually poses a bigger problem: The locate database has a tendency 
to not be up to date, because in the best case it is updated once a day, 
and on laptops typically it is never updated at all unless 
locate.updatedb is started manually. Now since texmacs uses locate to 
find all kinds of files, pixmaps, TeX font maps, and apparently also 
documentation, it is inevitable that it will make mistakes.

The only safe way to start texmacs would be to run locate.updatedb 
before *every* start of texmacs. This is, of course, unacceptable.

--
Martin