[OS X TeX] New distribution

[Herbert Schulz]

> On May 10, 2018, at 3:06 PM, Murray Eisenberg <murrayeisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Same thing here. I’m getting:
> 
>   kMDItemContentType                     =“public.tex"
> 
>> On 10 May2018, at 3:56 PM, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On May 10, 2018, at 1:30 PM, gratzer <gratzer at me.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> My new distribution works fine (thanks to all), but the TeX icons became generic.
>>> 
>>> ??
>>> 
>>> My fault?
>>> 
>>> GG
>> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> Sigh... here we go again.
>> 
>> I assume you mean that what used to be a TeXShop document icon is now a generic icon.
>> 
>> First, please open the Terminal application and type
>> 
>> mdls
>> 
>> with a space after the `s'. Then drag and drop one of the files with a generic icon onto the Terminal window and press Return. Look for an item called kMDItemContentType and let me know what it is set to. For normal icons I get
>> 
>> kMDItemContentType                     = "edu.uo.texshop.tex"
>> 
>> (there's lots of other output).
>> 
>> Good Luck,
>> 
>> Herb Schulz
>> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)

Howdy,

Ah... I think I can help. First delete LaTeXiT! Then do a Safe Boot (Hold down the Shift key when the tone sounds until your get the Booting screen). Re-boot normally. Then Download the zipped LaTeXiT.app from my download site, <https://herbs.github.io>. Finally unzip it and place it where you had LaTeXiT before. It may take some time but the icons will probably come back. There are other things that can cause this so this isn't guaranteed.

An explanation: LaTeXiT.app has another application, LaTeXiT Helper.app, internally. Unfortunately, that application defines a ``UTI'', public.tex, for .tex files that it shouldn't define. The (damn) OS should use the icon for the application defined to Open the file when double clicked but that's not the way it works; it uses the UTI. There can be multiple UTI's defined for .tex files and you never know which one the OS will choose (e.g., BBEdit defines one too). Not only that, every once in a while the OS cleans things up and rebuilds that database so the UTI used can change out from underneath you. The version of LaTeXiT on my download site fixes up LaTeXiT Helper.app to not define that UTI so fixes that problem. By removing the old LaTeXiT and booting into Safe Mode that database gets cleaned up. Then when you put the new LaTeXiT in place that UTI is no longer defined.

As I said, there are other applications that define their of UTI for .tex files so there are lots of ways for the OS to mess up the icons. While not ideal I've started to use TeXShop to edit all sorts of text-like files just so I can remove other interfering UTIs; even my well loved BBEdit!

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)