How do I compile the shapes.letters package from the TeX-SX Launchpad site

Question

In a few places on this site, such as this question, the shapes.letters package is mentioned:

I would like to use it. So I download pgflibraryshapes.letters.dtx from here, and try to compile it. How do I do this? If I hit it with latex I get 'LaTeX error: Missing \begin{document}', and if I hit it with tex I get 'missing $ inserted'. What am I doing wrong?

I know that, but I haven't even got to that stage! I'm talking about compiling the .dtx file into a .sty. — Jamie Vicary, Jan 19 '15 at 13:35
@JamieVicary pinging like that only works if the user has commented on or edited the specific post. — Paul Gessler, Jan 27 '15 at 10:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 27 '15 at 10:40

This basic sequence is how to proceed in general and it worked for me for the file in question:

Download the file into some directory searched by TeX and not under the control of a package manager (for example, $TEXMFHOME for TeX Live).
Try to maintain a structure consistent with the main installation tree. For example, for this file, I'd place it at $TEXMFHOME/tex/generic/pgf/libraries/shapes/ to use the same file structure for shapes libraries as the packaged shape libraries in the main install tree.
Open your favorite terminal and navigate to this directory. Run latex pgflibraryshapes.letters.dtx (possibly twice to resolve references in the documentation). Several files are generated, already in the correct place.
Now the new library can be used with \usetikzlibrary{shapes.letters} in any of your documents. You can inspect the log file to ensure that the file is being found successfully. On my system, I got this line in the log file:

c:/Users/<username>/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/libraries/shapes/pgflibraryshapes.letters.code.tex

How do I compile the shapes.letters package from the TeX-SX Launchpad site

1 Answers1