[OS X TeX] OS X TeX newbie needs help installing TeX on non-boot volume

Rowland McDonnell rjmm-lists1 at fireflyuk.net
Sun Sep 11 14:59:35 CEST 2005


> Am 10.09.2005 um 18:01 schrieb Rowland McDonnell:
> 
> >>
> >> I think there is nowhere a place to change the location where
> >> i-Installer installs teTeX ...
> >
> > I can see a button in the i-installer UI which says, quite plainly,
> > `Change install location'.
> 
> Probably when you try it the first time at all ... (I can't see it!)

I've never used i-installer to install anything, of course.  But the
`Change install location' button is plainly visisble.  Take another look
- if you can't find it, I'll send you a screenshot of the particular UI
pane which has the button and I'll draw on a big arrow pointing at the
button so you can find it yourself.

> >> 1. Set an environment variable TEXMF in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
> >> that points to a teTeX 'root' directory on the other volume.
> >
> > I don't have such a directory (or file for that matter).  Could you
> > tell me what uses it and why I might want it?  Of course I can
> > create the directory/file pair easily,
> 
> Really? 

<sigh>  Of course not.  I was just lying to annoy the list.  Or maybe...
Let's see what happens when I do the same check today that I did
yesterday:

Jota:rowland rowland$ cd ~/
Jota:rowland rowland$ ls -a
.                       .freeciv                Public
..                      .lpoptions              Rebecca's efforts
.Arachnophilia          .mplayer                Send Registration
.CFUserTextEncoding     Desktop                 Sites
.DS_Store               Documents               Temporary Items
.Trash                  Library                 a.bash_profile
.Xauthority             Mail                    a.cshrc
.bash_history           Movies                  a.mailfilterrc
.bash_profile           Music
.fonts.cache-1          Pictures

*Now* do you believe me?

>The directory and the file in it come from NeXTSTEP.

Jolly good.  They don't exist on my Mac.

> They are  
> explained in Technical Notes:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html

Ah!

I see.  Apple explains in QA1067 that the folder and file you refer to
do not exist by default
<http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html>:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
You will have to create the .MacOSX directory yourself using terminal
(by typing mkdir .MacOSX). You will also have to create the environment
file yourself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

> http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1255.html
> 
> On your local disk you might have /Developer/ADC Reference  
> Library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/Concepts/ 
> EnvironmentVars.html (or  
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ 
> BPRuntimeConfig/Articles/EnvironmentVars.html). Apple provides this  
> file too:  
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/ 
> OSX_Technology_Overview/CommandLine/chapter_8_section_4.html

Thank you for the pointers - I happen to know what affects the chances
of me having that data available so I'm not confused by you at this
point.  Can you explain what this has to do with installing teTeX and
friends?

> >> Log off
> >> and log in again, maybe as the owner of the TeX software,
> >
> > I don't understand what this means.  How can there be an owner of
> > software that's not installed?
> 
> OK, I still act too often as a human being. 

(<puzzled> ??)

>I meant: the future owner.  

Okay.

> (An administrative account only, quite useful with fast switching  
> between users and helpful to preserve an important installation from  
> damage by viruses etc. the "normal" user might bring into the system.)

What viruses?  We have none as yet and the only proper protection
against computer problems is backups and archives.  All users on this
computer are admin users in any case.  Normal accounts are too
restrictive for my liking, given the way I like to use my computers and
the users who have accounts on this machine.

(Security worries?  None at all.  Backups, secure passwords, firewall
on, Virex (not that it's worth it), etc., no always-on 'net connection,
and the computer itself is locked away from prying fingers by being
inside my home where only two people have access to it.  And almost all
the data I care about is both backed up and kept in places on HD that
are non-standard so it's not likely that I'd suffer terribly even if I
did get clobbered by some future malware or hacker attack.)

> >> 2. Create on the command line a sym-link! First you should have
> >> created  a new and empty directory (folder),
> >
> > What is the folder you refer to for?
> 
> This folder is an invisible one. You can make it visible by entering
> on the command line in Terminal 'open /usr <Return>' or 'open
> /usr/local <Return>' or in Finder by Cmd-Shift-G and entering the
> pathname /usr or  
> /usr/local.

Thank you.  But I asked:

What is the folder you refer to *FOR*?

That means what I want to know is: to what end would I want to create
such a folder?  For what use is it intended?

(I apologise for making my question hard to understand - I admire the
fact that you can use English pretty well and please do *not* take this
as any kind of criticism, 'cos it's not.  I'm a native English (and I
mean English English) speaker and, like most such, embarrassingly unable
to understand any other language and pathetically grateful that `you
continental types' seem to make the effort and have no trouble at all.
Of course you do it out of necessity and the fact that I happen to
benefit is a side issue - but still...)

> > I'm afraid I don't follow you at all here.  I know how to create
> > folders and I can see how to create Unix symbolic links from what
> > you write. I don't see what you're trying to get me to achieve by
> > following these instructions.
> 
> The aim is to have a symbolic link /usr/local/teTeX that points to the  
> teTeX folder on the other volume.

Why?  Or rather, what effect does this have and how does it help me do
what I want to do?

> >> You probably only have the "thin" versions (a bundle of various
> >> scripts and configuration files).
> >
> > What makes you think that?
> 
> Experience ... but I know there's a 'make fat' entry in some menu of  
> i-Installer.

You have no experience of me, so how can you talk about experience?

I do of course have my own experience, and I too know there's a `make
fat' entry that is not documented and I had to have explained to me. 
But I had it explained to me and used it.

I'm very puzzled by the assumptions that you have been making.

> >> This measure too will help you in a case when you want to
> >> reconfigure your installation and install an addition, for example
> >> add a new format or delete a language from Babel or make the fonts
> >> in the PDF output files to "download" to the printer,
> >
> > Could you explain what i-installer has to do with this?  I thought
> > all that sort of stuff was done by configuring the packages
> > directly.  I certainly don't want to get i-installer involved when
> > I am creating new formats!
> 
> Some users are not that experienced and need to use any of the other  
> two modes of operation i-Installer offers: Configure Only and  
> Uninstall. 

Perhaps, but since that aspect of i-installer is not really documented,
I don't see how anyone can make intelligent use of it.

> These two other buttons (modes of operation) are other  
> interfaces to your teTeX installation's administration (a third one is  
> on the command line).

Is there any way I can find out what they do?

> > (and I don't use Babel - I've rolled my own on the hyphenation side
> > because I only want UK English and US English hyphenation patterns
> > available - I have a hyphen.cfg file looking like this:
> 
> That's what *you* have!

Correct.  And that is the point: I want to have the same thing with
teTeX.  I do not want to lose anything when I move to teTeX.  There's no
reason for me to lose anything so I won't.

> Do you already know what the TeX i-Package has?  

I know nothing at all about it.

> How do you make i-Installer use your file somewhere on a multi-volume  
> disk?

I really don't know what you're talking about.  I have no idea how to
get i-installer to do *anything* for me - beyond downloading data and
sometimes deleting it without warning or explanation (Gerben tells me
that can't happen, but it did).

I intend to install teTeX and then build some new formats the way *I*
like them, after reading the teTeX documentation which I assume will
tell me how.

I don't want to use someone else's formats - they don't do what I need.
What else would you expect?  I mean to add my TeX bolt-ons to whatever I
install so I can have *MY* LaTeX setup running the way *I* like it, just
as I've had for about a decade now.  (I've had a TeX-capable computer
for only about a decade.)

And because of this, and because i-installer doesn't come with adequate
documentation, I'm asking for help in finding out how to do what I want.
Gerben Wierda told me to ask here because it was a very friendly and
helpful mailing list.

> >> i.e. the usual set of PostScript fonts that comes with the
> >> PostScript printer is downloaded
> >
> > Erm?  Why assume that I have a PostScript printer?  I was using HP
> > inkjets exclusively up until not long ago when I did, finally, buy
> > a PS printer.  But I've been using home computers for 25 years now
> > and only got round to acquiring a PS printer in the last handful of
> > months.
> 
> Usually the built-in PostScript interpreters in hardware offer a
> better quality than soft RIPs.

I'm sorry - I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.

The HP PS emulator in my new printer (HP LJ 1320) is visibly much
worse at rendering PS than Ghostscript, but I've not been able to use
Ghostscript for printing on a Mac without jumping through annoying
hoops (such as rendering each page on screen, saving each page as a
seperate file, and using a graphics app to print each page - that sort
of thing.  Okay, I got to converting to pdf eventually - but that way
of working was always far too painful to use).  Then I got pdfTeX and
stopped thinking about the matter.  Before I got a PS printer, I was
effectively unable to print PS files and that was that.

But all that stuff is `soft RIPs', surely?  You have software to render
PS, it Raster Image Processes, and it's all software wherever the
computer that's running it happens to be, be that computer built into a
printer case or be it built into a PC case (the original LaserWriter had
a 68020 CPU, at a time when the Macs that drove them had 68000s.  Think
on this).

[snip]

Rowland.
(no closer to solving his problem)
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