Can't compile using arabtex on macos arm

[ringstellung]

I have been a LaTeX user since its beginnings and among other packages I have used Arabtex since its first release; in fact today it is essential in my work. A few days ago I installed Mactex 2022 version under macOS ARM and found that I cannot compile any of the files involving Arabtex, not even the sample files of the package.

In order to show the problem I have edited the small file named arabtex_problem.tex which simply writes the letters of the arabic alphabet and the corresponding transcription. When running from the terminal the command

$ pdflatex arabtex_example.tex

the following error is displayed:

(/usr/local/texlive/2022/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3backend/l3backend-pdftex.def
! Undefined control sequence.
\a@ins ...et \a@less < \else \global \let \a@less 
                                                  \a@insert \leavevmode \bg...
l.168 <
               < ~
?

included in the file arabtex_example.log that I provide you with. The message:

\gdefnext { "a@puttt" \leavevmode" \arab@tail }

also appears inside the file arabtex_example.err that I also provide.

In addition I provide the file arabtex_example.pdf which should be the result of the the compilation, which has resulted when compiling with the installation of Tex Live 2020 under Linux. I don't know if MacTex 2021 would work fine under my macOS ARM.

Everything leads me to conjecture that the error could be in the l3backend package (updated now at the time of writing this). Possibly the edition of l3backend has ignored essential features of the arabtex package that would be indispensable for the compilation of .tex files involving it.

I'm not a expert on how the latex repositories works but if this is not the right place to create this issue I would be grateful if you could point me to the correct place.

My thanks in advance for your work and effort

arabtex_example.zip arabtex_example.pdf

Setup:

• system: macOS 12.3.1 arm
• pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.24 (TeX Live 2022)
• arabtex is the package with the issue

[u-fischer]

Sorry but this is the wrong place to report problems with arabtex. We are not maintaining it.

Move \setarab\arabtrue behind \begin{document}. The command setups lots of stuff for arabic. Beside other it changes the catcode of < to active, and this breaks various code in \begin{document} expecting to be able to use it to compare numbers.

[ringstellung]

Thank you so much, this has really help me a lot. I was not aware where was the correct place for this. We can close this issue if is not needed.