[OS X TeX] MacTeX installer and man pages

[Justin C. Walker]

On Jul 21, 2006, at 09:57 , Chris Goedde wrote:

> On Jul 21, 2006, at 11:45 AM, Justin C. Walker wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 21, 2006, at 09:08 , Chris Goedde wrote:
>>
>>> I just upgraded to Tiger and installed TeX and friends using the  
>>> latest MacTeX installer (very nice!). I need to look at the man  
>>> page for ps2pdf, so I opened the terminal and typed 'man ps2pdf'.  
>>> This gives the response 'No manual entry for ps2pdf'. However, if  
>>> I look in /usr/local/man/man1, I see ps2pdf.1, as I should. So  
>>> apparently, something (path setting or otherwise) is not getting  
>>> set for the man pages. What's the recommended way to do this?  
>>> Shouldn't this have been done automagically by the MacTeX installer?
>>
>> I can't speak to the MacTeX installer issue, but for Mac OS X (cf.  
>> "man man" and "man man.conf"), the man command is configured via  
>> 'man.conf'.  Since "/usr/local" is not standard, it may not be set  
>> up in the configuration file.  You can modify this yourself,  
>> following the info in that file.
>
> Thanks, I forgot about man.conf. When I look in there, I see the  
> following:
>
> ## TeX modifications start at Wed Jul 19 16:14:27 CDT 2006
> ## Do not remove previous line
> MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin- 
> current       /usr/local/teTeX/man
>
> I also see (elsewhere in that file):
>
> MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/bin          /usr/local/share/man
>
> The MacTeX installer is putting the man pages for binaries (like gs  
> and ps2pdf) that live in /usr/local/bin into /usr/local/man, not / 
> usr/local/share/man, which is where Apple seems to think they  
> should go, so this seems like a bug in the installer. In fact,  
> going to /usr/local and executing 'sudo mv man share' fixes the  
> problem.

That seems a bit "procrustean" :-}

Wouldn't it be better to add
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/bin          /usr/local/man

to your conf file?  Packages have used both locations in "/usr/local"  
for man pages, so the conf file seems like the best bet to keep  
things working.  I have mine configured this way, and it does work.

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large
Institute for the Enhancement of the Director's Income
--------
Experience is what you get
   when you don't get what you want.
--------



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