[OS X TeX] pdf font coding problems

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 22 déc. 05 à 17:04, Jens Nöckel a écrit :

> thanks for the info - I'll add this to my instructions, for those  
> who use i-installer. I've got various other OSX applications that  
> call scripts, and to get them all on the same page the plist  
> mechanism has worked perfectly well for me. And as I say, it's  
> customizable. I customized it so that fink will come first, because  
> I don't use i-installer.

Re-reading what I had written, I realized things may not be as simple  
as I had thought: it's not necessarily true that a GUI application,  
such as your Platypus script, will by default be able to launch Unix  
binaries that are in the path of a login shell, such as that provided  
by Terminal.

This problem has arisen several times, in particular for Enhanced  
Carbon Emacs and for LyX/Mac. The technical details are beyond my  
understanding: I remember Gerben telling that it is up to the GUI  
application to set up an environment providing the correct path for  
the Unix binaries that it may be calling, and citing TeXShop as an  
example, but I don't remember the exact solution. Given that LyX/Mac  
is no longer using the ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist route, they have  
probably found a solution. I'm a bit too short of time today to do  
more resarch on this (being on holiday this evening, still with  
several things to do, and not back until 9 January).

Wait: in a earlier message to this list, here's what Gerben said on  
this topic:

> De : Gerben Wierda
> Date : 31 mai 2005 23:55:20 HAEC
> À : TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List
> Objet : Rép : [OS X TeX] epstopdf can't find Ghostscript
> Répondre à : TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List
>
> On May 31, 2005, at 23:25, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>
>> Am 31.05.2005 um 22:50 schrieb Gerben Wierda:
>>
>>> The environment.plist file is a leftover from NEXTSTEP and  
>>> because it influences all apps it may have unwanted and  
>>> unexpected effects (in fact it can break i-Installer if the  
>>> contents are broken)
>>
>> Can you be a bit more specific on this? Which settings have this  
>> impact? PATH only?
>
> PATH is an important one for any tool that uses subprocesses. Muck  
> around with it and suddenly apps may get different versions or none  
> at all. I have had my share of help requests for i-installer doing  
> funny things as a result of this.
>
>>> The correct way is to have the GUI *application* (and not a  
>>> global setting for all GUI applications) set the right PATH  
>>> before executing commands.
>>
>> You mean that at login-time the correct values for PATH or path  
>> should be set? And this should work because any process created by  
>> a GUI app should have then too the right settings?
>
> No, what I mean is that if a GUI app requires non-default setting  
> for its working (and that generally means running subprocesses) it  
> should keep its own PATH setting. TeXShop does this in its  
> Preferences (in the Engine tab).
>
> The Apple Frameworks for running subprocesses have the possibility  
> to pass environment variables to that subprocess. Hence, TeXShop  
> passes an updated environment to the subprocess including a PATH  
> containing  and /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc- 
> apple-darwin-current (or whatever you set in preferences)
>
> It is OK to have some sort of a default. It is not OK that i- 
> Installer's PATH changes because some other Foo.app needs a  
> different path.
>
> I am probably giving up on this. If I produce a next version of i- 
> Installer it will completely set its own environmen, just to be  
> protected against stuff coming from environmen.plist
>
> G

Again that's a bit too technical for me, but I hope it makes more  
sense to a programmer.

Bruno Voisin------------------------- Info --------------------------
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