[OS X TeX] TexShop suddenly can't find pdflatex.fmt (even though it's there)

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 10, 2008, at 3:39 PM, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> On 10 sep 2008, at 21:50, Nathaniel Pearson wrote:
>
>> Ok, I've got /usr/texbin as the lead path in $PATH, have TexShop  
>> too pointing to /usr/texbin for pdftex, and /usr/texbin showing up  
>> properly for `which latex'.  And I've used Fink commander to remove  
>> the Fink tex installation as well.
>>
>> However, upon typesetting in TexShop I still get the following error:
>>
>> /urs/local/texlive/2007/texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/pdflatex:  
>> unrecognized option `--synctex=1'
>> This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>> \write 18 enabled.
>> %&-line parsing enabled.
>> kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt
>> mktexfmt: No such file or directory
>> I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!
>>
>> What might I try next?  Thank you to all who have been helping to  
>> solve this.
>
> Make all formats?
>
> sudo mktexfmt --all
>
> (as administrator).
>
> Maarten

Howdy,

Mktexfmt is really a symbolic link to fmtutil so it builds the format  
files in the user directory. Unless you you are building personal  
formats not the case here) you really should use

sudo fmtutil-sys --all

but once you've done the mktexfmt those formats won't be ``seen'' by  
TeX. Sigh...

The complaint about ``unrecognized option'' is because MacTeX (TeX  
Live) 2007 doesn't have synctex. It is totally harmless!!!

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)