PDF export fails with pdflatex and LuaTeX

Richard Kimberly Heck rikiheck at lyx.org
Wed Feb 12 00:34:00 UTC 2020


On 2/11/20 3:44 PM, Martin Weise wrote:
> On 11.02.20 20:44, Kornel Benko wrote:
>> Am Tue, 11 Feb 2020 14:33:23 -0500
>> schrieb "Paul A. Rubin" <parubin73 at gmail.com>:
>>
>>>>> If you open a terminal in the temp directory and run pdflatex against
>>>>> the .tex file, does it compile? If not, is there a meaningful error
>>>>> message in the terminal?
>>>>>
>>>>> Paul
>>>>>  
>>>> Yes, it does. There is no error.
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>>  
>>> Okay, what follows is definitely grasping at straws. From a clean start 
>>> of LyX, load the HelloWord.lyx file and try to either view or export a 
>>> PDF. Presumably this will fail. Copy the LaTeX .log file in the LyX temp 
>>> directory to someplace safe. Leave LyX open (so that the temp directory 
>>> remains).
>> I would
>> 	create a new (empty) directory
>> 	copy HelloWord.lyx there
>> 	and use this copied file
>>
>>> Now, in a terminal, run pdflatex on the .tex file in the LyX temp 
>>> directory. Presumably this succeeds in generating a PDF file. Copy the 
>>> new LaTeX .log file someplace safe. Then compare the two (using either 
>>> 'diff' if you are command-line oriented or 'meld' if you like graphical 
>>> output) and see if you can find a clue in the differences between the 
>>> log files. Alternatively, you can post both log files here.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>> 	Kornel
>>
> Ok, here's something I (just) noticed: pdflatex, when run without
> arguments, produces a .dvi file from HelloWorld.tex. It is only if I
> specify "-output-format=pdf" that it creates a .pdf file.
>
> From what I understand, this is not what pdflatex should normally do.

No, that is not at all what it should do. If that's happening from the
command line, then there is some problem with your LaTeX installation.

This might help:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/53600/pdflatex-producing-dvi-output-instead-of-pdf

You might also try posting about the issue there, as that is kind of old.

In the sort term, you can add the argument "--output-format=pdf" to the
converter for "LaTeX (pdflatex) to PDF (pdflatex)" under Tools>
Preferences> Converters. I.e., make the converter:

    pdflatex --output-format=pdf $$i

Hopefully, that will work.

Riki





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