Troubleshooting

List of known installation problems.

pip install manim fails when installing manimpango?

Most likely this means that pip was not able to use our pre-built wheels of manimpango. Let us know (via our Discord or by opening a new issue on GitHub) which architecture you would like to see supported, and we’ll see what we can do about it.

To fix errors when installing manimpango, you need to make sure you have all the necessary build requirements. Check out the detailed instructions given in the BUILDING section of the corresponding GitHub repository.

(Windows) OSError: dlopen() failed to load a library: pango?

This should be fixed in Manim’s latest version, update using pip install --upgrade manim.

Some letters are missing from TextMobject/TexMobject output?

If you have recently installed TeX you may need to build the fonts it uses. Which can be done by running:

fmtutil -sys --all

Installation does not support converting PDF to SVG?

First, make sure your dvisvgm version is at least 2.4:

dvisvgm --version

If you do not know how to update dvisvgm, please refer to your operating system’s documentation.

Second, check whether your dvisvgm supports PostScript specials. This is needed in order to convert from PDF to SVG.

dvisvgm -l

If the output to this command does not contain ps  dvips PostScript specials, this is a bad sign. In this case, run

dvisvgm -h

If the output does not contain --libgs=filename, this means your dvisvgm does not currently support PostScript. You must get another binary.

If, however, --libgs=filename appears in the help, that means that your dvisvgm needs the Ghostscript library in order to support PostScript. Search for libgs.so (on Linux, probably in /usr/local/lib or /usr/lib) or gsdll32.dll (on 32-bit Windows, probably in C:\windows\system32) or gsdll64.dll (on 64-bit Windows, probably in c:\windows\system32 – yes 32) or libgsl.dylib (on Mac OS, probably in /usr/local/lib or /opt/local/lib). Please look carefully, as the file might be located elsewhere, e.g. in the directory where Ghostscript is installed.

As soon as you have found the library, try (on Mac OS or Linux)

export LIBGS=<path to your library including the file name>
dvisvgm -l

or (on Windows)

set LIBGS=<path to your library including the file name>
dvisvgm -l

You should now see ps    dvips PostScript specials in the output. Refer to your operating system’s documentation in order to find out how you can set or export the environment variable LIBGS automatically whenever you open a shell.

As a last check, you can run

dvisvgm -V1

while still having LIBGS set to the correct path, of course. If dvisvgm can find your Ghostscript installation, it will be shown in the output together with the version number.

If you do not have the necessary library on your system, please refer to your operating system’s documentation in order to find out where you can get it and how you have to install it.

If you are unable to solve your problem, check out the dvisvgm FAQ.