OT: [OS X TeX] Re: MANPATH Problem (but not with settcshtexpath ;-)

[Gerben Wierda]

On Wednesday, Oct 2, 2002, at 23:06 Europe/Amsterdam, Juan Falgueras 
wrote:

>> Make sure you have *NO* MANPATH environment variable set at all. Then 
>> man will work just fine.
>
>
> 	Oh!
>
> that did the magic
>
> but, then, should be in my .login a
>
> 	unsetenv MANPATH
>
> ??

man used to be governed through a MANPATH environment variable. 
Nowadays, the default setting is in a configuration file 
/etc/manpath.conf. But when MANPATH *is* available, the config file is 
ignored. When you have an older setup where somewhere in your system 
(generic startup files for your shell, fink, whatever), a MANPATH is 
set, it prevents you from using the newer mechanism. I do suspect, 
having a MANPATH variable is faster, so what you could do is set

	setenv MANPATH `manpath -q`

in your .login. That will read manpath.conf and output the result which 
is then set in your MANPATH variable. Now, man will use this variable. 
If manpath.conf changes, you need to restart your shell or re-run 
.login. Note, this is untested, I just think this would work.

The situation is somewhat like TeX. There used to be all kinds of 
environment variables for TeX (TEXINPUTS, etc), nowadays these are 
found in a configuration file. Like with man, if you set TeX's 
environment variables, the ones on the config files are ignored (and 
you might get problems because of that).

G

PS. (see subject of this thread) why do people always blame me for 
their problems? ;-)


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