[OS X TeX] Asymptote config

[Michael Sharpe]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 11:47 AM, David Arnold wrote:

> All,
> 
> I'm very new to Asymptote and was pleased to see that it's part of the mactex installation. However, this command responds that gv is not found:
> 
> david-arnolds-macbook-pro-2:asymptote darnold$ asy -V test
> Cannot execute gv
> Please put in a file config.asy: 
> 
> import settings;
> psviewer="LOCATION";
> 
> where LOCATION specifies the location of your PostScript viewer.
> 
> Alternatively, set the environment variable ASYMPTOTE_PSVIEWER
> or use the command line option -psviewer="LOCATION". For further details, see
> http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/doc/Configuring.html
> http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/doc/Search-paths.html
> david-arnolds-macbook-pro-2:asymptote darnold$ gv
> -bash: gv: command not found
> 
> I've always wondered what is used in the mactex installation in place of gv. 
> 
> By the way, this works fine on my mac:  asy -V -f pdf test
> 

The standard method appears to be to create (if it doesn't exist already) a hidden folder

~/.asy

and make a plain text file in that folder named config.asy. Mine has contents:

import settings;
outformat="pdf";
batchView=false;
pdfviewer="/Applications/Skim.app/Contents/MacOS/skim";
gs="gs";

Obviously, this produces pdf output with skim as the viewer.

Michael