[Mac OS X TeX] Dvi and postscript previewers

[Tom Kiffe]

>Great job! However:
>
>1) I'd rather not to create a bin/ directory in my home directory.
>   Moreover, my PATH variable already includes the paths where the tex
>   binaries and my binaries are. Why not using that? Can I ignore your
>   *.scripts files?

The cmactex.script and macghostview.script files are absolutely essential for
any of the three programs to call unix binaries. Tex, dvips, etc are
called using the popen function call. This call opens the zsh shell to
execute the command. The only paths built into zsh are /bin and /usr/bin.
The two script files allow me to augment zsh's search path so that it will 
find executables in /usr/local/bin. If your tex binaries are located somewhere
else you can simply modify the two scripts. Apparently zsh does not read any
user rc files when it is launched from popen and using the setenv command
in these two scripts is the only successful way I've found to get zsh to look
in other directories for binaries. I could very well be missing something
here and maybe a unix expert could help me with zsh.

These scripts have to be put someplace and ~/bin is the likeliest
location.  It is a universal folder and is the place to put any shell scripts
are binaries that you create. I don't understand your reluctance to create
a bin folder in your home directory. It is a standard unix feature and
Apple even includes it in your default search path.

>2) The structure of my texmf directories is complex (it is the one
>   from the latest tetex distibution from fink), and I dont want to
>   change it:
>   TEXMF=!!/usr/local/lib/texmf:!!/sw/share/texmf.local:!!/sw/share/texmf.os:!!/sw/share/texmf
>   How am I supposed to set the main and the local folders? And, of
>   course, I'd rather not create a ~/Library/texmf folder.

Choose for your main texmf folder the one that contains all of your font
files. Only MacDviX needs to load tfm and vf files from your texmf tree. Just
like tex, dvips, etc, MacDviX reads various configuration files when it runs.
The only logical place for these files is in a local texmf folder in your
Library folder. A local texmf tree in ~/Library provides a standard location
to store all of the files you add to a TeX installation. This is where I keep
all of the type 1 fonts I have purchased from Adobe and other vendors, like the
MathTime and Lucida fonts. By putting them in ~/Library/texmf they won't be
affected whenever I have to update my whole teTeX distribution and they will
be found by the teTeX binaries.

Using ~/bin and ~/Library/texmf directories is the easiest way of extending
you TeX installation without having to change anything anywhere else.

>3) I'd like to use the default paths of tetex for the generated PK
>   fonts, not necessarily the /Users/Shared path. And in general: is
>   it possible to reuse ALL the paths I have set for tetex by default?
>

The pk files you may create for MacDviX probably won't be used by dvips
or pdftex since they will have a base resolution of 300 dpi while the
default for all of teTeX is 600 dpi. The /Users/Shared folder is writable
by anyone and makes as much sense as a location for generated pk files as
/var/tmp/texfonts (teTeX's default).

>So, in general my questions are related to the possibility to use
>cmactex as a real shell on top of general tetex distribution, without
>creating anything ad-hoc.

My installation does not require any changes to any files included with
teTeX. You do not have to be root or even have Admin privileges to install
this package. It will work even if you update teTeX. Using ~/bin and a
~/Library/texmf directories is the natural way of extending your system.
The cmactex.script and macghostview.script files are only called by my
programs, so your zsh is not affected if it is run by any other program.

--Tom

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