Package documentation (was Re: [OS X TeX] Minimal flowchart)

[Herbert Schulz]

On May 9, 2007, at 1:17 AM, Alan Munn wrote:

> At 8:45 PM -0700 5/8/07, Joshua Smith wrote:
>> On May 8, 2007, at 8:21 PM, Adam M. Goldstein wrote:
>>>
>>> On May 8, 2007, at 8:18 PM, Mark Eli Kalderon wrote:
>>>
>>>> Are you sure it is not installed already? What distribution are  
>>>> you using? Try running kpsewhich pgf.sty to see if it is  
>>>> actually already installed. Best, Mark
>>>
>>> I have TL2007, and the kpsewhihch command Mark suggests found  
>>> pgf.sty om my machine.
>>>
>>> I think Schremmer uses gwTeX, though? As a matter of fact  
>>> ``locate pgf" finds it in the appropriate gwTeX folders.
>>>
>>> So have at it . . .
>>
>> I am considering using pgf/TikZ.  I see (now) that gwTeX includes  
>> it, but when trying to open the documentation, texdoc pgf and  
>> texdoc tikz do not find anything, but texdoc pgfmanual does.  I  
>> only knew this filename because I thought gwTeX did not include it  
>> and found the manual in the package download.  As another example,  
>> texdoc hyperref and texdoc hyperref/manual yield two different  
>> pdfs.  In general, how I am supposed to know how to call the  
>> documentation if texdoc <packagename> does not open it?
>
> This is a bit of a pain.  It would be much nicer if package authors  
> made the documentation file the same as the package name, so that  
> to find the docs for foo.sty one could always type texdoc foo.   
> However, since it's not this way, I usually use locate and grep to  
> find the doc files related to a package.  So locate foo | grep doc  
> will yield a list of files from which one can usually guess the  
> right one for the manaual.  Then use texdoc to open that file.   
> Maybe there's a better way.
>
> TCOB browser theoretically can do this better, but I never seemed  
> to figure out how to get it to find all the local documentation.   
> (It seems to find some but not others.)
>
> Alan

Howdy,

I've been using Spotlight (of coursed you must have OS X 10.4.x) with  
reasonably good success. To get it to index my gwTeX distribution I  
use SpotlightIndexer and tell it to force the indexing (I think  
that's the default in the latest version but I'm not sure---it's set  
in preferences) of /usr/local/gwTeX/. If anything changes in you  
distribution you'll have to re-run SpotlightIndexer but that doesn't  
happen very often so it isn't a big deal.

BibDesk supplies a built-in ,bib importer, TeXShop has aa built- 
in .tex importer and Adam Maxwell once put together a .dvi importer  
(is that still available?).

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)



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