[OS X TeX] X11 and path questions

[Ettore Aldrovandi]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 03:30:30PM -0500, Stephen Moye wrote:
> I have just installed the new TeXLive-2007 package. In Terminal, if I  
> type:
> 
> 	: where latex
> 
> I get
> 	/usr/texbin/latex
> 
> as expected. But if I query 'where latex' in X11 I get nothing. I'm  
> using emacs under x11 so this is a problem. Can I put something in  
> the .xinitrc or .tcshrc files to get X11's attention?

The reason this happens is that if you start X11 from, say, the dock,
or anyway by double clicking, X11.app will inherit the environment from
login and windowserver (I'm simplifying a bit, here), and not read your
.profile or .login, depending on the shell. Starting emacs from X11
won't see it either. Three solutions:

1. set PATH explicitly in .tcshrc or .bashrc
2. start X11 from Terminal.app with "open -a x11" at the command
line. This instance will inherit your environment, with
/usr/texbin in the path.
3. set your PATH in the file environment.plist  in the directory
~/.MacOSX in your account. This way your path will be consistent
and available to aqua applications as well. Here's mine:

---cut here---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>PATH</key>
        <string>/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/texlive/bin:/opt/dports/bin</string>
</dict>
</plist>
---cut here---

Actually, this is the only place where I'm setting my path. My
.zprofile contains:

# the PATH is stored in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist so both unix
# and aqua applications have access to it.
export PATH=$(defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment PATH)


Hope this helps,

--Ettore
-- 
Ettore Aldrovandi
Department of Mathematics	http://www.math.fsu.edu/~ealdrov
Florida State University	      aldrovandi at math.fsu.edu
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA	   +1 (850) 644-9717 (FAX: 4053)

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