[OS X TeX] Trouble accessing beamer docs

[Maarten Sneep]

On 25 feb 2008, at 22:33, Rowland McDonnell wrote:

> I've come across a problem accessing documentation with MacTeX 2007.
>
> I've not moved any of the standard installed components: everything is
> where it was installed (G4 iMac, 10.4.11).
>
> texdoc beamer in Terminal.app opens the following file in Firefox.app:
>
> file://localhost/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-doc/doc/english/catalogue/
> entries/beamer.html
>
> If I click on Documentation->Read documentation for this package from:
> bearmeruserguide.pdf, I get this message:
>
> Firefox can't find the file at
> /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-doc/doc/macros/latex/contrib/beamer/.
>
> /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-doc/doc/ exists, but contains no macros/
> directory; it contains directories named after languages from  
> bulgarian
> to vietnamese.
>
> The beamer documentation exists at this location:
>
> /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/doc/latex/beamer/doc/ 
> beameruserguide.
> pdf
>
> Anyone got any thoughts?

There is (obviously) a mismatch between the tex catalogue and the  
actual file locations. I've asked in the MacTeX group where things  
might have gone wrong. Thanks for reporting.

In the meantime, you can use "texdoc beameruserguide" to open the  
correct file without having to manually search your trees. So texdoc  
searches in the right tree, but because the actual documentation has a  
different name from the package, it will open the catalogue instead  
(the catalogue is a fallback). Unfortunately the catalogue is  
mismatched to the disk locations. There are a few packages like this,  
some require "texdoc geometry/manual" to open the right file, in this  
case the geometry docs.

Maarten