[OS X TeX] TeX Live 2015 and MacTeX-2015

[jfbu]

Hi

thanks for these extra information bits about the genesis of
the Programs directory,

I am sure that the extra level of indirection has a completely
negligible efficiency impact ; nevertheless I decided when
creating manually /Library/TeX/texbin to forget about the
Programs location. I learn from your message that some
future version of the Preference Pane might very well make use 
of it, and I thus make a note to myself to be aware of that
in the future.

The /Library/TeX/texbin is perfectly fine with me, as would have been
any more obscure location inside /Library/TeX. I actually don't know
what use there can be for MacTeX users not familiar with command
line to actually have access to texbin from the Finder easily
(which is granted via /Library/TeX but not so if in some deeper location)

The only things I felt like adding to texbin/ in the past
have been symlinks latexdef -> texdef or xelatexdef -> texdef,
and the like,
but in the end I created them in /usr/local/bin with the idea
that they would survive there to the yearly TeXLive/MacTeX installs
(thanks to the primary texbin symlink)

Thanks for the alert about future El Capitan. I skipped Yosemite
as I don't own a retina display and I am not enthusiastic about
the smartphone iOS looks.

Apologies for multiple postings: subscribing to the list late last week
proved a challenge and Gary Gray helped me out (thanks Gary!). 
Only today do I get confirmation this all worked out in the end.

Jean-François

Le 23 juin 2015 à 19:04, Richard Koch <koch at uoregon.edu> a écrit :

> The Programs directory you mention below was an addition by Jerome Laurens
> to the data structure last year, i.e., 2014. You may recall that before
> MacTeX-2014, the Preference Pane didn’t work with Mavericks. 
> Just before the release of TeX Live 2014, Jerome wrote with a new version
> which did work, and this change to the data structure.
> 
> Jerome and I exchanged some “hot” emaiil after that. I contended
> that a last minute data structure change was dangerous. I believe Jerome
> made the change to make possible additional features of the
> Preference Pane, which have not yet materialized. 
> 
> Ultimately I concluded that the addition did no harm and accepted it,
> thereby getting a fixed Pref Pane for Mavericks.
> 
> There are a few users who would like us to “clean up” the TeX
> Dist data structure. I personally believe this is a waste of time,
> but you should feel free to pursue the issue.
> 
> On the other hand, the change to a replacement for /usr/texbin is essential
> for El Capitan, and I do hope that /Library/TeX/texbin will be accepted
> without discussion, since it will affect the configuration of lots of
> GUI programs.
> 
> But as to where /Library/TeX/texbin points next, I really don’t care!
> 
> Dick Koch
> 
> 
>> On Jun 21, 2015, at 1:20 PM, jfbu <jfbu at free.fr> wrote:
>> 
>> a bit of my context: the extras in my installation are from MacTeX 2014,
>> but recently as I had already the pretest of TeXLive 2015 installed,
>> when official version was released I did only a few adjustments
>> but did not download MacTeX 2015, (I know I am missing some bounties
>> like extra support in Ghostscript for far east languages)
>> thus my experience with TeX Dist Preference Pane might be at odds
>> with the latest version.
>> 
>> on my system /usr/texbin was a symlink to
>> 
>> /Library/TeX/Distributions/Programs/texbin
>> 
>> the latter itself a symlink
>> 
>> Anticipating the possible upgrade to El Capitan next fall,
>> I thus suppressed /usr/texbin symlink, then created the similar one
>> in /Library/TeX/ and updated accordingly /etc/paths.d/TeX
>> 
>> This process left me with two mutually contradictory questions:
>> 
>> 1) if the Programs/ repertory is to serve anything, shouldn't
>> /Library/TeX/texbin be a symlink to it rather than to
>> sub-element Programs/texbin ?
>> 
>> 2) as I see nothing in this Distributions/Programs/, so it
>> should not hurt if I define the /Library/TeX/texbin symlink
>> to point directly to
>> /Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/texbin
>> which is the thing which the TeXDist Preference Pane updates
>> whenever one uses it to switch distributions
>> 
> 
> 
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