MiKTeX and proTeXt ⇒ Enable shell escape for epstopdf

[evad]

Hi,

I've been trying to use the epstopdf package to convert my eps images to pdf on the fly.

However I've been unable to get rid of the "Shell escape feature is not enabled" error when I include the package. I've tried using various command line options and editing various ini files that different websites have suggested but am now completely stuck

I'm using MikTex 2.5 on Vista if that helps.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Cheers.

[countbela666]

Hi,

the epstopdf documentation suggests to use the command line option --enable-write18 for MiKTeX systems whenever calling latex or pdflatex. I'm sure you can add this option to the build process of every better LaTeX GUI. For TeXnicCenter you can add this option to the "arguments" box from the "(La)TeX" tab of each output profile (Alt+F7).

Regards
Marcel

[evad]

Hi Marcel,

Thanks for your reply (and spotting my typo). I am using TeXnic center, but I still get the same warning even when this argument is used. I'm using the Latex=>Pdf output profile and the "Command line arguments to pass to the compiler" box contains:

Code: Select all

--enable-write18 -interaction=nonstopmode "%pm" 

If you have any more ideas please let me know!

All the best,

Dave.

[countbela666]

Hi Dave,

you're right. The warning occurs even if the --enable-write18 argument is being passed to pdfLaTeX. But nevertheless the package works, even if this warning is shown.

The documentation says that since version 1.3 the package is not only able to detect whether the pdfshellescape argument but even whether the write18 argument is passed to pdfLaTeX. But this feature does not seem to work, for whatever reason. If you want to get rid of this warning you can define \pdfshellescape in your document by adding the following line before including the epstopdf package:

Code: Select all

\def\pdfshellescape{1}

Regards
Marcel

[Nukkels]

Thanks for those responses guys. I'm also using TeXnic center and getting this message. I remember using it in the past on a different computer and having some minor issues with eps files, but it was something to do with the format of the actual eps file itself, at the time of creation IIRC.

I've applied both of the code snippets and I still get the message and still don't get my images compiling with the rest of my document. Is there something else to try?

[T3.]

Try to compile from the command line a minimal document testing for write18 availability:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Write18 test
\immediate\write18{dir}
\end{document}

That should spit out the current directory listing to stdin during latex run. If it doesn't then it means that shell escape doesn't work for some reason. If that's the case you might try MiKTeX's discussion group for help or just try a newer version of MiKTeX.

Cheers,

Tomek

[evan.variano]

Hey guys, I got this to work as follows, using TeXnicCenter (installed with standard options, no tweaks or changes whatsoever) on Windows Vista. I used the argument as given above, as well as some code in my headers to enable epstopdf, which I took verbatim from http://petro.tanreisoftware.com/?p=47. Thanks for the advice.

Cheers,
Evan