[OS X TeX] Newbie questions:

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 8 juin 06 à 12:28, Peter Dyballa a écrit :

> It's not that easy: you need, as I was complaining on the MacTeX  
> list, a decent ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist for this to work. (I  
> think I made earlier this year enough experiments on this topic in  
> Mac OS X 10.4/Tiger in bash or tcsh based environments to state  
> this. But I am still curious if there is a way to solve this with  
> RC files!)

Regarding these experiments on the MacTeX list, is there some  
repository from which the original poster or any other X11-oriented  
list subscriber can download the latest version of your archive  
MacTeX_and_X11.zip? Or is it included in the MacTeX distro? (I  
haven't attempted to install this distro, being too much at ease with  
the TeXShop/i-Installer combination after years of use to consider a  
switch.)

> And, Bruno, please learn that Gerben Wierda changed some time ago i- 
> Installer in a way that is does not rely on false settings in  
> ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist is no more  
> a bad thing for i-Installer -- it can be a threat for the runtime  
> environment though! Meanwhile there are a few GUI applications to  
> correct this file if needed.

I knew this. But what I fear is that it can affect other applications  
than i-Installer.

 From all the years I worked in Mac OS 6 to 9, I have developed a  
strong antagonism towards applications that require modifications of  
the OS in order to work: namely, all the applications that were  
installing Extensions and other system "enhancements" in /System  
Folder/, resulting in an endless stream of crashes and  
incompatibilities and finally provoking the addition of Extensions  
Manager to Mac OS. At the time of Mac OS 9.2.1, the situation had  
become bad to the point that the OS was practically unusable, and I  
was experiencing routinely more than three OS crashes a day.

Because of this, even now in OS X, I tend to avoid any application  
that adds kernel extensions and the like, or modify standard OS  
configuration files, in order to work. No application should affect  
the working of other applications. And that's how I feel about  
~/.MacOSX/environment.plist as well. For CLI-savvy people mastering  
fully each and every aspect of what is inside this file, I agree this  
is surely a treat, allowing applications to be customized in order to  
work in the most convenient way. But I'm definitely not CLI-savvy!

Bruno------------------------- Info --------------------------
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