[bug-notifications] [texlive_latex_base 0005091]: pdflatex doesn't seem to recognize .tex document

[Mantis Bug Tracker]

A NOTE has been added to this issue. 
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https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=5091 
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Reported By:                blindpassenger
Assigned To:                pfelecan
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Project:                    texlive_latex_base
Issue ID:                   5091
Category:                   
Reproducibility:            always
Severity:                   major
Priority:                   normal
Status:                     feedback
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Date Submitted:             2013-07-12 11:00 CEST
Last Modified:              2013-07-12 19:33 CEST
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Summary:                    pdflatex doesn't seem to recognize .tex document
Description: 
When trying to open a .tex file with pdflatex we are getting an error
message. It looks like pdflatex doesn't recognize the .tex file, because it
says that "\begin{document}" is missing. This is however not true. This is
an excerpt from the tex document:

\setlength{\headrulewidth}{0.0pt}
\setlength{\footrulewidth}{0.0pt}
\begin{document}
\parbox[t]{9cm}{{\bf To:} \parbox[t]{8.0cm} {

Here is how we execute pdflatex:

pdflatex -halt-on-error -interaction batchmode <fullFilename>



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 (0010499) pfelecan (manager) - 2013-07-12 19:33
 https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=5091#c10499 
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What you need to understand is that previously we packaged teTeX which was
deprecated and integrated in the TeXLive distribution. There is at least 5
years of difference between the 2 distributions and the content, TeX and
LaTeX wise has quite evolved. IMHO, your issue is due to the usage of LaTeX
style packages, e.g. fancyheadings instead of fancyhdr (see the log file
that I attached)

pdflatex is a TeX interpreter using a LaTeX format.

The error is due to the interpreted source (i.e. the set of TeX and LaTeX
packages and your code) and not the interpreter per se.

To demonstrate this I run your file through a different packaging, running
on GNU/Linux Debian Testing and obtained the same error. The conclusion of
this experiment shows that if you use TeXLive 2012, on whatever
distribution you try, OpenCSW, Debian, RedHat, &c, you'll obtain the same
results.

The TeX/LaTeX ecosystem evolves and introduce different interpretation, a
little bit as using a Python 2.x code with a Python 3.x interpreter.

Unfortunately this all that I can do for you.