Compile old LaTeX document

Question

Recently I found an old LaTeX document I've written in 1994. It starts with a line

\documentstyle[makeidx,twoside,german,bibgerm,a4wide,mydefs,
               equations,fleqn,psfig]{script}

Now I tried to compile this document using an actual version of MiKTeX on my windows machine, but pdflatex complains about an undefined contol sequences '\phspace':

! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \uppercase {i}\phspace
                                  {1em}Fail--Stop

I'm very sure this document compiled without any errors in 1994 (it was my thesis). What can I do to make this compilable again?

Answer 1

I think \phspace was probably an old LaTeX 2.09 primitive that is no longer used. Try adding

\let\phspace\hspace

in your preamble.

Answer 2

This looks like something that comes from the toc file. Do you still have all the auxiliary files produced by the old LaTeX in the same directory? If so, you should delete them before trying with a modern LaTeX. These include at least aux, toc, lof, and lot.