[OS X TeX] TeXShop and Cloud Computing

[Alan Munn]

On Oct 1, 2011, at 12:29 PM, Nitecki, Zbigniew H. wrote:

> I use Texshop on two different computers---a home laptop (MacBook Pro) and an office iMac, and have had some problems trying to use Folders Synchronizer to avoid carrying my laptop when I walk to my office.  The recent purchase of an iPad 2 prompted me to investigate using Tex Touch and Tex Timer to be able to work on tex files from the iPad while traveling, and in particular I have started using DropBox instead of synchronization to have access from different computers to a single set of files.  This seems to work a lot better than synchronizing.
> 
> Which brings me to my questions.
> 
> 1.I have several .sty files with a mass of custom macros that I use in all of my work.  On my laptop and on my iMac, these reside in my user ->Library->texmf->tex (or bibtex)->latex  folder.  I understand that these are now hidden in Lion;  if I use the search function (the magnifying glass on my tool bar) I can find about 15 different files with the correct name, but can't find the pathname to any of them.  Obviously there is only one I want to use, and that is the one which TeXShop calls up.  How do I find it?

If you open a Terminal window, and type 

kpsewhich foo.sty

it will return the actual path that TeX uses to find that particular file.  So for example, on my machine

kpsewhich article.cls

returns /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls

while 

kpsewhich Statweave.sty

returns

/Users/alan/Library/texmf/tex/latex/Statweave/Statweave.sty

which is in my local texmf folder.

> 
> 2. Even more to the point, I want to put these files in DropBox so that again I have only one copy to modify when I need to.  Where do I put them in Drop Box so that TeXShop will find them when I \usepackage them?  (of course, TeXShop resides in two copies, one on my laptop and one on my iMac).
> And can that be designed so that these files get used when I am using TeXShop on a file that didn't come from Drop Box as well?

I don't know much about Drop Box, but  I would suggest putting them a single folder inside your dropbox, and then creating a symbolic link inside the local texmf folder on each of the macs to that dropbox folder.  Then the dropbox folder will appear as if it is in the local texmf folder.

Assuming that your files are just of one type (e.g. latex packages) you would make the link inside ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex


To make the symbolic link

ln -s <path-to-dropbox-dir> ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/<local-dir-name>

Alan

-- 
Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com