[OS X TeX] Re: PS on TeX Switcher

[Richard Koch]

Charilaos,

Thanks for these messages; it is interesting to see new issues like  
these arise.

On Nov 24, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

> That sounds reasonable, but why does this method need a mpkg and a  
> whole installer?

Because I was lazy, and primarily because using Administrator  
privileges from a Cocoa
program is hard. This hack provided a way around that problem.  
Emphasis on the
lazy part.

> I'm thinking of the possibility that some user might want various  
> versions of the TeXLive distro around

Good point. But I think it is premature to design for this.

>
> There is however the following important problem. GUI programs  
> don't get to use what happens in /etc/profile, since they don't get  
> to see the shell. /etc/profile only kicks in when a shell is being  
> used, namely in the Terminal. So all these changes to the PATH  
> variable don't help programs like TeXShop and TextMate to determine  
> where the correct TeX is to be found etc.

I was hoping that the /usr/local/texprograms link would solve this  
problem. This solution works for all of the
GUI programs I've tried, and it seems to me that it would work to  
find kpsewhich. One problem is that
Gerben doesn't currently create this link, but on the other hand he  
doesn't destroy it, so if it is
set once (by say TeX_Switcher) it will remain valid.

> If on the other hand those installers, instead of taking care only  
> of /etc/profile, also took care of ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist,  
> setting an appropriate value for the PATH variable there, then the  
> settings in that file are indeed read by all GUI apps, and so  
> neither TextMate nor TeXShop would need to do any particular work,  
> they could just call all TeX tools without a need to be told what  
> explicit path to use.

Gerben has explained several times on this list why he thinks changing
environment.plist is a bad idea. This is an area where experts can  
disagree.
I have to report that Gerben has convinced me; TeX_Switcher definitely
won't change environment.plist.

Dick
koch at math.uoregon.edu

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