[OS X TeX] TeXShop 2.10beta10

[Richard Koch]

Jung-Tsung,


On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:36 PM, Jung-Tsung Shen wrote:
> Dick,
>
>> As a first step, please go to the Apple System Preferences control
>> panel. Do you have a "TeX Distribution" panel at the bottom?
>
> Nothing there ...
>
>> What happens when you open Terminal and type
>>
>>         cd /usr
>>         ls -l texbin
>>
>
> No such file or directory.
>
>> What happens when you type
>>
>>         which pdflatex
>
> /sw/bin/pdflatex
>
> So guess I AM using Fink installation!


Aha. Now I understand what happened to you. TeXShop did the correct  
thing by
switching to /usr/texbin. But you don't have an up-to-date TeX  
distribution, so
you got an error message. To further confuse matters, it looks like  
you have
two TeX distributions, Fink's teTeX and Gerben Wierda's original  
teTeX distribution.

Luckily, Gerben Wierda and Jerome Laurens have figured out how to  
clarify this
confusing situation, which happens more often than we'd hope.

I'd like you to install one of the modern TeX distributions. This  
will NOT OVERWRITE
your existing distributions, so you can continue to use one of them  
if you wish. But it will
add the TeX Dist preference pane by Jerome, allowing you to switch  
between
distributions easily.

Adding this modern installation will make /usr/texbin work in  
TeXShop, no matter which distribution
you choose to use. It will enable you to trivially switch between the  
modern distribution
and your old one, in case you fear that some incompatible change was  
made in the
modern distribution.

Also when you installed Fink, your PATH variable was modified,  
possibly in

	.bash_profile

or in some other .bash... file. Now /sw/bin is the first element in  
your PATH.
If you install a modern distribution as I suggest, then please also  
modify
your PATH so /usr/texbin is the first element  and PATH reads:

	/usr/texbin:/sw/bin:...

where the remaining PATH elements remain as they are now.
Then Fink won't interfere with using TeX from the command line and  
you will
use the distribution chosen by the preference pane.

There are currently at least three distributions which provide the  
TeX Dist stuff:

	TeXLive-2007-Dev   (get this at www.tug.org/mactex/ 
morepackages.html; 627.7 MB)
	gwTeX (get this using i-Installer or at www.tug.org/mactex/ 
morepackages.html; 321 MB)
	BasicTeX (get this at www.uoregon.edu/~koch; 39.7 MB)

The main difference between these distributions is size. The first  
gives a complete
installation of the latest version of TeXLive-2007, but is a very  
large download. The second
gives Gerben Wierda's carefully selected subset of TeXLive-2007,  
which almost always
provides everything you need and can easily be kept up to date with i- 
Installer. The third is
a sort of experimental subset of TeXLive-2007 deliberately designed  
to be a very small
download with a fair amount of functionality.

And join me in thanking Gerben and Jerome for this wonderful solution  
to your problem.

Dick Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu




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