Bug 1695946

Unable to specify html2ps as the component!   Specified texlive as closest match, though it shouldn't be.

I know it's a huge dependency.

Texlive is used for rendering MathML:

    if(&math2sym($math)) {
      $_=$beg.$sym.$end;
    } elsif($package{'TeX'} && $package{'dvips'}) {
      ...
      `tex $scr.tex`;
      `dvips -E -o $scr.ps $scr.dvi`;
      ...
    } else {
      $math=~s/<math$R//i;
      $_=$beg.$math.$end;
    }

math2sym() returns false if not all entities could have been converted to a postscript text directly:

sub math2sym {
  local($_)=@_;
  s/<math$R//gi;
  for $char (keys %symb) {s/&($char)(;|$|(?=\W))/\\$symb{$char}/g};
  $stat=!/([&<][a-zA-Z]|[_^{])/;
  s/[a-zA-Z\s]*[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\s]*/)ES()I($&)ES()SY(/g;
  s/(\\200|\\201|\\202)/)RO($&)ES(/g;
  $sym=")SY($_)ES(";
  $stat;
}

Then Texlive is used if configured, or the half-rendered MathML text is simply echoed into the output.

So Texlive is used for fine rendering of too complex mathematical symbols, while a text-only fallback exists.

I tried to convert a simple HTML + MathML example <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Embedding_MathML_in_HTML.2FXHTML_files>. With Texlive the output cannot be interpreted with GhostScript (it reports /limitcheck error). Though the intermadiate PostScript coming from dvips is interpreted by GhostScript fine. Probably something is wrong with embedding it inside the main PostScript document. I conclude the Texlive mode of operation is broken.

I will try to disable the dependency on tex and dvips in html2ps.

It is great someone is finally looking at this, old problem.
For years I have been installing "a2ps"
 dnf install a2ps
and then forcibly removing the unneeded TexLive packages
 dnf remove --noautoremove texlive\*