building these tex files

[DoctorIdiot]

Hey, I was trying to rebuild these pdfs from the tex files (so I could add a couple of elements that nobody cares about).

i'm a complete noob to all things LaTeX but have been reading like crazy and thought I was going to be able to get this done. no such luck though, and now that I have chased down all the errors i was getting, I am stumped.

I installed MikTeX (windows 10), loaded up these files and before trying to edit anything i just tried to build the first book as is, using XeLaTeX as the compiler in texworks. I got a ton of errors about fonts, but I solved most of those by doing some reinstalls of Lumos, Garamond, etc. Finally got to a point where the console doesn't scream at me about those, at least not fatally.

but now that i've got past those, i've finally gotten this new error that has stumped me completely:

[2]) (hp-contents.tex [1] [2]
No file hpmor-1.toc.
[3]) [4] (chapters/hpmor-chapter-001.tex [1
dvipdfmx:fatal: Invalid font: -1 (4)

i checked the miktex xetex log file as it recommends, and all i could find among the chaos was this:

2021-08-11 13:34:24,756-0400 INFO miktex-xetex - executing input pipe: extractbb "--version"
2021-08-11 13:34:24,756-0400 INFO miktex-xetex.core - starting input pipe: extractbb "--version"
2021-08-11 13:34:24,756-0400 INFO miktex-xetex.core - start process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c "extractbb "--version""
2021-08-11 13:34:26,615-0400 INFO miktex-xetex.core - start process: miktex-dvipdfmx.exe --miktex-enable-installer -q -E -o hpmor-1.pdf
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex.core - Invalid argument
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex.core - Function: fwrite
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex.core - Result: 22
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex.core - Data:
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex.core - Source: Libraries\MiKTeX\TeXAndFriends\include\miktex/C4P/C4P.h:646
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex - Invalid argument
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex - Info:
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex - Source: Libraries\MiKTeX\TeXAndFriends\include\miktex/C4P/C4P.h
2021-08-11 13:34:27,414-0400 FATAL miktex-xetex - Line: 646
2021-08-11 13:34:27,416-0400 INFO miktex-xetex - this process (7176) finishes with exit code 1

I cannot for the life of me figure out what's happening here. the console error seems to suggest i have yet another font problem, but the log seems to be saying that there is an invalid argument in the miktex-dvipdfmx.exe line....

I could see there being a problem in dvipdfmx that is the result of a font problem or whatever, but "invalid argument" seems like a weird way to log it if so. but then again i know nothing of LaTeX issues or MikTex issues in particular. I've uninstalled/reinstalled/updated and all the usual dance and no dice.

I'm in the (very long) process of installing TexLive now to see if maybe this is a MikTex issue, but I thought I would reach out here to at least note the issue.

What have you used to build the pdfs? and are you able to build them now? Some of the other console errors seem to mostly say things like "we don't use this syntax anymore" and such, so i'm wondering if maybe I need to find some old versions of latex compilers to get it to work or something...

[xenohedron]

Hey there, sounds like you've learned a lot in the process but I'm sorry it's been so difficult for you!

1. When I originally built these back in 2015, I used MikTex on Windows 7. I used "xelatex-build-full.bat" as my build script. Looking back I can't tell you why I decided that calling each build four times in a row was a sensible idea (normally twice is sufficent to fix all the references), but it worked at the time.
2. I was later able to build an alternate version using Tex Live on Fedora, although I don't remember what I used for that build.
3. I forked this codebase originally from rjl20, who I believe used a Makefile. I struggled with that at the time, which is why I made my windows batch script, but you could potentially try that direction.
4. I tried just now on my current machine (Tex Live on Linux Mint) After manually installing the fonts, I was able to build the pdfs with no fatal errors in the process (apparently \hackChXV is undefined, not sure exactly what happened there...)
5. There are definitely some questionable choices in my codebase, as I inherited a lot of things I didn't understand and figured it out as I went. You could try looking at my other repository for The Snape Chronicles, which I did later based off this one and might use some better techniques. That's where I took the raw font files from for the build I just tried.
6. There are also some newer repositories out there forked either from mine or from rjl20. I looked at some of those in 2017 and started incorporating some improvements, but sadly I never got around to finishing that project for a second edition release.
7. You should not need old versions of LaTeX compilers. I speculate that messages about old syntax are probably due to your packages (or perhaps the memoir class) being newer versions than what I used.
8. LaTeX error messages are often not particularly helpful. I would recommend putting "Lumos.ttf" and "Miscellanea.ttf" directly in the build directory, and making sure GaramondNo8 (all four .ttf files) is installed in your system. That may or may not solve your issues.

Best of luck, if you continue to have issues I'll try my best to offer advice.

[DoctorIdiot]

This was an amazing reply!
You've given me an abundance of things to consider and/or experiment with.
It's going to take some time, but if and when I figure out anything useful, i'll try to be just as detailed in my reply, on the off chance that anyone in the future might find themselves in the same pickle.

re: point 6, i've got ahead and grabbed the fork i could find, from knuesel, to see if I can get any of that compiling. Seems as good a place as any to start. They apparently built it with LuaLaTeX, so on the off chance that my issues are XeLaTeX related, this might get me somewhere. Or at least might get me a different flavor of error messages :)

Thanks so much, for your original work, and for your help here!
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