[OS X TeX] Remarks about TeX on Leopard
Richard Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu
Fri Nov 2 22:50:44 EDT 2007
Folks,
There are two small glitches in in Leopard when using TeX installed by
i-Installer or MacTeX. The first is that the script simpdftex, used to
typeset in TeX and Ghostscript mode, doesn't run in Terminal. In beta
versions of Leopard, this script also failed when called from a front
end, a much more serious problem.
The second glitch is that the man command in Terminal cannot find TeX
man pages. This glitch is caused because Leopard contains a much
simpler and more elegant method to add entries to PATH and MANPATH,
and the old method of extending MANPATH no longer works.
I have put a small install package named LeopardTeXFix on my web page
www.uoregon.edu/~koch
This package fixes both problems. The package only runs on Leopard,
and is only useful if you installed from i-Installer or MacTeX.
The web page also contains a detailed explanation of the bugs, in case
you'd prefer to fix them by hand.
----------------------------
Earlier today, a few users complained that in TeXShop 2.14, changing
the default source font in Preferences only changes the font in the
main view, but doesn't change the font in the split view. This problem
has nothing to do with Leopard and is fixed in
www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop.zip
Unless this problem concerns you, there is no reason to obtain this
copy. I hope to fix a number of minor bugs in version 2.15, available
next week.
-----------------------------
For a long time, users have pointed out that TeXShop leaks memory when
a file is typeset. After typesetting many times, it may be necessary
to quit and restart the program.
This leakage is deliberate. When Tiger was introduced, I discovered
that the program became sluggish after typesetting a large file.
Experiments showed that the sluggishness occurred when the system
released the old pdf data from memory. So I added code which kept the
old pdf data rather than disposing it, and the sluggishness vanished.
See
TeXShop Help --> How do I configure TeXShop --> Hidden Preference Items
for details. TeXShop has a hidden preference to turn this "fix" off:
defaults write TeXShop ReleaseDocumentClasses 2
Recently, a few users reported that this command fixes the memory
leakage without introducing sluggishness on Leopard. Thus I recommend
that users type this command in Terminal (but ONLY if they are running
Leopard!). Please let me know of any problems this creates. If the
command is issued again with a "1" rather than a "2", you'll return to
the current behavior.
Dick Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu
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