MiKTeX 2.8 Known Issues

This page lists the biggest stumbling blocks you may come across when you install and use MiKTeX 2.8.

TeXnicCenter compatibility

LaTeX terminates with "GUI framework cannot be initialized" if invoked from TeXnicCenter (1.0 Stable Release Candidate 1).  This happens when a missing package needs to be installed and the pop-up window cannot be displayed.

Remedy: start MiKTeX Options and choose either Yes or No (but not "Ask me first") for the option "Install missing packages on-the-fly".

LaTeX produces PDF (not DVI)

If you experience that

latex foo

produces foo.pdf (instead of foo.dvi), then you should check your preamble code. For example, the following code does not work as expected because the primitive \pdfoutput is always defined:

\newif\ifpdf% 
        \ifx\pdfoutput\undefined% 
\pdffalse% 
\else% 
        \pdfoutput=1% 
        \pdftrue% 
\fi%

Instead of the above code, you should use the ifpdf package:

\usepackage{ifpdf}

This package provides a working \ifpdf macro.

ConTeXt doesn't work

Symptom: texexec --version outputs nothing.

ConTeXt scripts are written in Perl and Ruby. In order to make use of ConTeXt, you must install both language interpreters.