[OS X TeX] Problem with tetex/gwtex and fink

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Holger Schulz has explained why he doesn't want to go the TeX Dist  
route, and I respect that.

Bruno's summary shows that my previous email wasn't clear. Let me try  
again.

I proposed that Holger install the full Fink distribution of teTeX,  
and then use Jerome Lauren's TeX Distribution preference pane to  
switch between gwTeX and teTeX. The advantage on the Fink side is that  
other Fink packages dependent on TeX would install without pain and  
the problems with system-tetex could be avoided. Presumably Holger  
would use the TeX Dist panel to choose gwTeX; then the advantage on  
the TeX side is that all GUI apps would use gwTeX and Terminal  
operations would also use gwTeX. I am a fan of Jerome and Gerben's  
work because it reliably solves problems with multiple TeX  
distributions on a machine.

So, how to do that? There are two problems. The first problem, common  
to Fink's teTeX and MacPort's teTeX, but not to other distributions,  
is that Fink resets the user's PATH variable so it always searches /sw/ 
bin first. Gerben (and MacTeX) also reset PATH, but they add /usr/ 
texbin to the end of PATH rather than the beginning. To fix this  
problem, we add /usr/texbin to the start of PATH after Fink has made  
its modification. After that change, PATH will be exactly as set by  
Fink whenever teTeX is chosen in the panel, but when geTeX is chosen  
in the panel then TeX binaries will be found in gwTeX, but other Fink  
binaries will be found in Fink.

The other problem is that i-Installer doesn't add the very small data  
structure for Fink's teTeX and MacPort's teTeX. This data IS added by  
all of the current MacTeX packages. The obvious solution to this  
problem is for me to make a little install package to add the missing  
data, or for Gerben to make a little i-Installer package to add the  
missing data. But I have other things on my plate, and I'm too lazy to  
do it, and Gerben has much more still on his plate.

So to get just that little extra data, if you didn't install from  
MacTeX, you'll need to reinstall SOMETHING from MacTeX. This something  
could be TeX Live and 600 megs, or gwTeX, and 300 megs. Instead, I  
proposed installing BasicTeX because it is only 38 megs. The sole  
reason to install BasicTeX is to get that little extra Fink tex- 
distribution data because I'm lazy.

After you are done, you'll have no more use for BasicTeX, which is  
entirely installed in /usr/local/texlive/2007basic, so this entire  
folder can be thrown away.

Dick Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu



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