Re: help debugging latex-overlays boxes

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

> Hi All,
>
> I am using org-mode in a course this fall with 60 students.  All of them
> are using org-mode from elpa. For about 10 of them, they are unable to
> toggle the latex-overlays; instead of getting the equations, they get
> empty gray boxes with an error that the png file was not created.  Oddly
> enough, they can export to PDF just fine. I have also checked that they
> have LaTeX (TeXLive) installed, and it appears it is. I am able to
> convert tex files to dvi, and then use dvipng to make a png image. But
> for some reason, the toggle-latex-overlay function does not work for
> them.
>
> I am at a loss to figure out what the issue is. These are Windows
> laptops that were preconfigured by the department. Almost all of them
> work fine, except for this small number I cannot figure out.
>
> Any ideas? Thanks,

I would edebug-defun the function org-create-formula-image and step
through it to make sure that it goes the way you want (are you sure you
are using the dvipng method on these machines? maybe you are using the
imagemagick method but the program has not been installed?  Check the
value of org-latex-create-formula-image-program).

While you are stepping you can also check the variables in the function
and see e.g. what the output file name is.

If that goes OK, then I would edebug-defun
org-create-formula-image-with-dvipng next and check the latex input file
it produces. Make sure that things like minted which require
--shell-escape are *not* included in that input file: it's processed by
a hard-wired call to latex (without --shell-escape) , so minted will
cause a failure. If that is the case, check org-latex-packages-alist and
make sure that minted's snippet-flag is nil.

HTH,
Nick