[OS X TeX] TeXShop and Cloud Computing

[Herbert Schulz]

On Oct 10, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Nitecki, Zbigniew H. wrote:

> I have had lots of responses to my original query (Question 1 in the attached email), with different kinds of advice.  The idea that I should keep a copy of my macro file in the same folder with each document I have seems both wasteful (beyond a certain point, dropbox costs money) and against what I have been told by my computing-savvy colleagues is best practice:  namely, that you keep one copy and point to it in all places where you use it.  I need to have the macro files available (for possible modification) no matter which machine I am working from, so they clearly need to reside on dropbox, not on one of my machines.
> I am not particularly used to using command line from terminal, but have gotten very used to the GUI interface.  I asked my IT guy how to make the symbolic link to the files on dropbox, and he suggested moving the folder icon onto my desktop (the resulting image is, according to him, a symbolic link---although in view of Herb's comment below it may be just an icon) and then putting it into the library where the macro files used to be.  I tried that, but still get a "cannot find file" error.  So I reverted to my old system: I have a folder called Macros which contains all my macro files, and it lives at ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex.  Used this way, I can compile my tex files fine.  What can I do to put the Macros folder in dropbox so that when I try to compile tex files in TeXShop I will be able to use the macro files?  (Or do I need to make an individual symbolic link for each .sty file inside Macros?)
> 
> Zbigniew Nitecki ...

Howdy,

First of all, even if you use DropBox the files actually exist on each of your systems. DropBox will keep them synchronized.

Second, assuming the files are in ~/DropBox/mymacros/ (i.e., the DropBox folder is in your HOME folder [the default location] and your macros are in a mymacros folder in that DropBox folder try running

ln -s ~/DropBox/mymacros ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/mymacros


in Terminal which should produce a symbolic link (which is NOT the same thing as an alias! You IT guy is wrong here) called mymacros in ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/ that points to the mymacros folder in ~/DropBox/.

See if that works for you.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)