[OS X TeX] personal package : following 2

[Claus Gerhardt]

It is bad enough that adults equipped with a Macintosh, TeXShop, a TeXLive installation and an internet connection cannot figure out by themselves where to put a personal .sty or a .bib file, but it is certainly better to teach them where to put those files by telling them to read in TeXshop's advanced help the section "Adding personal sty and macro files to TeXLive" (which might encourage some to look up TeXShop's help in the future when other problems will occur) then using another black box which copies the structure but still requires additional tedious explanations. 

Spoon-feeding adults should be avoided whenever possible.

Claus


On Dec 24, 2010, at 3:21, Alan Munn wrote:

> On Dec 23, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Claus Gerhardt wrote:
> 
>> What would be achieved, if the texmf folder and a subtree would be installed.
> 
> First, it would put all the folders in the right place, including the relevant subfolders, e.g. bibtex/bib and bibtex/bst which are both required, otherwise bibtex won't find the relevant files.
> 
>> Those we are concerned about wouldn't know that it exists, and, even they did, they still wouldn't know where to place personal sty files, etc., and all these questions, which could easily be answered by reading the "What is installed" file or simply by googling, would still be asked.
> 
> It's a lot easier to put things in a folder that exists (having been created already) than it is to put things in a folder that you have to create (plus all of its internal structure.)  And the people for whom this would be useful are the ones who say "I need to put a personal style file somewhere, where do I put it?".  They may be aware of personal files having used them on another platform, and just need to know the Mac way to do things.  If you're coming from Windows, this is not necessarily obvious, and is compounded by the fact that Windows users (in my experience with students) often know less about their computer's file structure than others.
> 
> When we answer ~/Library/texmf, and that folder doesn't exist, confusion often occurs.  On the other hand, if we provide a one-click solution, (as little app below), we make things a lot easier for new users.
> 
>> 
>> Since these questions have already be answered sufficiently and in great detail over and over again, we should pick one default link where the answer can be found and whenever the question is asked again simply provide the link without any further explanation.
> 
> But our experience is that such explanations are not as obvious as you and I might think. Plus, it's a pain in the neck to manually create all the relevant folders in the Finder.
> 
> 
> SO:
> 
> Here's a link to an application that does two things:
> 
> 1. If there is no ~/Library/texmf folder, it creates one, and populates it with all of the most useful sub-folders. (If one already exists, it reports that and doesn't do anything else.)
> 
> 2. It offers a button that opens the texmf folder in the Finder, so that people can get to it quickly. (This part is independent of whether it creates the folder or not, so the application can also be used to quickly find the folder.)
> 
> <http://www.msu.edu/~amunn/latex/make-local-texmf.zip>
> 
> Unzip the file and put it into your applications folder.  Schremmer can be the first guinea pig. :-)
> 
> Alan
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Dec 23, 2010, at 20:18, Alan Munn wrote:
>> 
>>> Since this is a problem that comes up from time to time, would it be possible for the MacTeX installer to check if the ~/Library/texmf folder exists, and if it doesn't create one with the appropriate folder structure?
> 
> -- 
> Alan Munn
> amunn at gmx.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------- Please Consult the Following Before Posting -----------
> TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
> List Reminders and Etiquette: http://email.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
> List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/
> TeX on Mac OS X Website: http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/
> List Info: http://email.esm.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/macosx-tex
>