[OS X TeX] Strange TeXShop engine behaviour

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 22, 2011, at 6:12 PM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

> 
> Am 23.09.2011 um 00:40 schrieb Alan Munn:
> 
>> if I add
>> 
>> export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>> 
>> to the engine, then it works.
> 
> Yes, this will work by overriding whatever TeXShop sets for the process environment in which the ENGINE file will run.
> 
> OTOH, it's also possible that you supply TeXShop with an inadequate LANG setting. The mechanism by which a Mac OS X application is launched does not include using a shell, as it would in other Unices. Therefore the file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist exists to correct the environment, which is set when you press RETURN in the "login window".
> 
> You can check TeXShop's behaviour by launching it from a shell this way:
> 
> 	env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 /Applications/TeX/TeXShop.app/Contents/MacOS/TeXShop &
> 
> Here TeXShop should run in an UTF-8 environment, and it should pass this setting to a process it starts. You could check with this and the original ENGINE script whether TeXShop works correctly.
> 
> --
> Greetings
> 
>  Pete
> 

Howdy,

Please... don't ever put PATH stuff in environment.plist. Even putting other stuff there makes it incredibly difficult to figure out what's going on when things go awry. And, as you know setting LANG that way will really mess things up if it's NOT en_US.UTF-8.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)