[OS X TeX] set environment variables for applications

[Ralph Pöllath]

Sorry I brought this topic up again..

Obviously, environment variables are not the same as user preferences 
and should not be used as such. Settings required by a single 
application should be stored in user preferences IMHO, and scripts 
should store their specific stuff in dot-files.

Environment variables, on the other hand, should only be used when 
required by several apps or scripts - just because sometimes there's no 
other way to do it (think non-OSX-savvy unix programs). Adam just gave 
some great examples of this. And since they affect all applications on 
your system, you should only use them if you know what you're doing. 
For the same reason, I think they should not be manipulated silently by 
any application.

I really, really, wouldn't have mentioned this if Peter hadn't asked 
for such a mechanism specifically (if I understood correctly). I just 
wanted to help solve his problem instead of suggesting 
environment.plist as a general solution.

Cheers,
-Ralph.

On 25.05.2004, at 16:33, Adam Maxwell wrote:
> On 25 May, 2004, at 09:16, Kino wrote:
>
>> But still I don't understand what the problem is. Does $PATH affect 
>> your packages? In the installation process? $PATH set in the 
>> environment.plist is not effective for commands executed in Terminal 
>> if I'm not mistaken.
>
> I set CVS_RSH=ssh and SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/501/SSHKeychain.socket in 
> environment.plist for precisely this reason: that they are available 
> to cvs/ssh when run from Terminal, CVL, XCode, Fugu, and other apps.  
> If I open an ssh session to my computer from another machine, or an 
> xterm in X11.app on my machine, they will not be set.  I think this is 
> one of the few legitimate uses for environment.plist...
>
> -- 
> Adam

On 24.05.2004, at 05:10, Peter Cholak wrote:
> 7.  One can forgo 5 and start emacs from the finder at the price that
>     bib-cite will not work properly.  Bib-cite needs some env variable
>     like TEXBIB to point to the /bib files.  It is on the wish list to
>     add kpsepath functional to bib-cite.  How one does pass variables
>     via the finder?
>
> -Peter

-----------------------------------------------------
Please see <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/> for list
guidelines, information, and LaTeX/TeX resources.