Re: Bug#311424: \usepackage{epstopdf} does not create pdf files

[Richard Lewis <rtf@jabble.com>]

Frank Breitling <frank.breitling@physik.hu-berlin.de> writes:

> I have realized the cause of the problem. To enable pdf creation on
> the fly, the `\write18' has to be enabled

> However one should not expect the user to dig into the sty files.

unfortunately the only documentation for epstopdf.sty is inside the
file itself.  (this is not uncommon with older packages).

  $ texdoc epstopdf

produces /usr/share/doc/texmf/help/Catalogue/entries/epstopdf.html
maybe you could provide a patch to document the \write18 requirement
in that file

> Therefor I suggest an appropriate error message, when the epstopdf
> packages is used in latex documents, but `\write18' is disabled. In
> addition an example of how to enable it (example: pdflatex
> -shell-escape test.tex) would be very helpful.

One problem with this is that it is not possible to test, within TeX,
whether \write18 is enabled or not.  Also the syntax used on the
command line is different in other tex distributions (eg miktex
on windoze uses -enable-write18 instead of -shell-escape)