[OS X TeX] how enable texdoc?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Aug 27, 2012, at 4:39 PM, Murray Eisenberg <murrayeisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 27, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Aug 27, 2012, at 8:45 AM, Murray Eisenberg <murrayeisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I have MacTeX 2012 installed and running (under Mountain Lion). How do I enable texdoc to work from a command line in Terminal?
>>> 
>>> I find, e.g.:
>>> 
>>> $ texdoc mathmode
>>> -bash: texdoc: command not found
>>> 
>>> Is there some reason texdoc is not automatically made available to bash when MacTeX 2012 is installed?
>>> 
>> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> What do
>> 
>> echo $PATH
>> 
>> and
>> 
>> which pdflatex
>> 
>> and
>> 
>> ls -alf /
>> 
>> and
>> 
>> ls -alf /usr
>> 
>> return when run in Terminal? Did you update to Mountain Lion after installing MacTeX?
> 
> I did update to Mountain Lion after installing MacTeX 2012.
> 
> 'which pdflatex' gives /usr/texbin/pdflatex. So I added /usr/texbin to my $PATH and now texdoc works as expected. Now 'echo $PATH' gives (for readability, new-lines inserted in output):
> 

Howdy,

Umm... if 

which pdflatex

returned

/usr/texbin/pdflatex

then /usr/texbin was already in your PATH!? Do you mean after you inserted /usr/texbin in your PATH as given below?

> /Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Math/Macaulay2-1.4/bin:
> /usr/texbin:
> /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.2/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:
> /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:
> /usr/local/mysql/bin:
> /Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Math/Singular/3-1-5/ix86Mac-darwin/:
> /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin
> 

Do you have a Macports TeX distribution in addition to TeX Live? If so adding /usr/texbin to the front of your PATH is the correct thing to do. However, if you don't have a Macports distribution your don't need to prepend /usr/texbin. In any case you should probably ``install'' FixTeXLive2012.pkg which can be found in /Applications/TeX; it will add /usr/texbin to the tail end of your PATH in a user independent way.

> Also, 'ls -alf /usr/' output includes:
> 
> rwxr-xr-x     1 root  wheel     63 Jul  8 11:15 texbin -> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/texbin
> 
> BTW, that was surprising, since that target texbin of the /usr/texbin symlink is itself a symlink back to: 
> 
>  /Library/TeX/Distributions/.FactoryDefaults/TeXLive-2012/Contents
> 

Actually I wanted to know what the permissions were for /usr/local. That double indirection is what is expected. That is what the TeX Distributions preference pane in System Preferences uses to allow you to have multiple TeX distributions change active the active one easily.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)