[OS X TeX] Is this geometry behavior correct?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 07.04.2007 um 10:54 schrieb Jonathan Kew:

> On 6 Apr 2007, at 4:46 pm, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>
>> Jonathan, you can make kpsewhich show a very detailed and hard to  
>> read path. Making the kpsewhich part of a pipe by adding on the  
>> command line
>>
>> 	 | tr : '\012'
>>
>> you'll see the path components on separate lines, unsorted, i.e.  
>> the way TeX actually searches.
>
> Yes, I know. And if you run something like
>
>   kpsewhich --show-path tex
>
> you'll see "kpsewhich" subdirs among the paths. I guess that's why  
> you decided to put geometry.cfg into such a dir. However, that's  
> wrong, because when you actually run latex (rather than kpsewhich)  
> those dirs will *not* be searched with the priority that kpsewhich  
> showed; the current program name (latex) will be used instead.
>
> To use kpsewhich properly, you should give it the --progname option  
> to ensure that you're seeing the same paths as would be used by the  
> real program you're interested in; for example,
>
>   kpsewhich --progname latex --show-path tex
>
> Then you'll see no 'kpsewhich' subdirs in the paths; instead,  
> you'll see 'latex' ones. *Those* paths are the ones you can use to  
> make sensible decisions about where to put files for latex to find  
> them.
>

You're right, Jonathan! The latter command works exact – I'll better  
create a qualified shell alias for this (and study a bit more of TeX  
Live 2007 pecularities). Today it works with geometry.cfg in /usr/ 
local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/geometry! So the revised recipe is:

	sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/geometry
	sudo cat /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/doc/latex/geometry/ 
geometry.cfg | sed -e 's;^%%\(\\ExecuteOptions{\)a4paper,\(dvips}\); 
\1letter,\2;' > /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/geometry/geometry.cfg
	sudo texhash /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

The last but one command offers the option to set a default paper for  
dvips, or leave it away, Then the cryptic "\1letter,\2" should simply  
be "\1\2". Those who want to record ISO A4 paper would need to  
substitute the word "letter" with a4paper, or change the whole  
command to:

	sudo cat /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/doc/latex/geometry/ 
geometry.cfg | sed -e 's;^%%\(\\ExecuteOptions\);\1;' > /usr/local/ 
texlive/texmf-local/tex/geometry/geometry.cfg


--
Greetings

   Pete

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.  
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
                                          - Jeremy S. Anderson



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