[OS X TeX] About /LIbrary/teTeX/share/texmf.local versus ~/Library/texmf

[Gerben Wierda]

On Thursday, March 14, 2002, at 04:17 , Maarten Sneep wrote:

> Yes, but with one problem (I got bitten by it, so I know). nehyph2.tex 
> was
> removed from the distribution recently and the hyphenation patterns 
> couldn't be
> created because nehyph2.tex wasn't found. The newly created language.dat
> contained the correct reference, but my local copy (which wasn't 
> touched by the
> installer) was outdated.
>
> How do you solve something like this in a local config? (apart from 
> checking
> every time that you install that everything went as planned and if not:
> figuring out what to do...)

In my case, the next release will forcefully remove language.dat from 
texmf.local, but it wil leave ~/Library/texmf alone.

In general: since language.dat and the cnf files like fmtutil.cnf 
infliuence the availability of formats in texmf.local it is a very bad 
idea to put language.dat and .cnf files in ~/Library/texmf. Formats and 
stuff are system wide and their creation should not differ depending on 
which user runs the configuration commands.

The place to put your modified stuff (and also the place where texconfig 
puts it) is texmf.local. I never change anything in that subtree, unless 
it is really necessary to keep stuff working (nehyph2.tex is a good 
example).

~/Library/texmf is a good place for your personal stuff, but not for the 
stuff that influences formats which are system-wide.

> I understand that Gerben is working on a solution (an easier to parse 
> format
> for language.dat and presumably a user-interface upon installing, but I 
> may get
> ahead of things here...)

A bit, yes. But there will be a nice solution and I hope this month. And 
it will use texmf.local, and not be ~/Library/texmf-aware.

G

PS. Anybody willing to create a new app icon for me (it's the one 
important thing for an app where I do not have the tools, nor the 
talent)?


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