[texworks] [patch] using env PATH on Unix instead of compiled defaults

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi!

Norbert Preining schrieb:
> On Mo, 18 Mai 2009, Norbert Preining wrote:
>   
>> Here is a patch that accomplishes that on Unix (Windows I have no idea
>> but maybe getenv also returns something useful there?). It is a
>> one-liner:
>>     
>
> On Windows it seems to return the PATH, too, but only with ; (info from
> a Windows master), so I propose:
>
> [patch skipped]

IIRC, MikTeX doesn't register properly in the path. At least I think I
had to tell some LaTeX editors where to find it back in my Windows days.
They may also have changed it in the meantime, but I wouldn't rely
solely on the path on Windows.

In general I'd suggest to keep the paths as they were in the sources so
far *in addition* to respecting the path. This raises the question of
which to prefer, however. And this depends on if (how) all these paths
are shown to the user.

In principle it is possible to have several TeX installations on the
same machine. While this usually qualifies as an expert system, users on
such systems may want to choose which installation they want to use,
rather than using the one that comes first in the path. The reverse
argument may be true as well, however (most users will usually want to
use their default installation, which should be the one in the path). So
in any case this should be user-customizable (I didn't look into your
patch in detail, so I don't know whether it applies before the paths are
displayed to the user in the preferences dialog or used afterwards).

Last but not least: on my Linux machine, TeXlive didn't modify my path.
It rather sym-linked its programs into /usr/local/bin. When I installed
additional programs later on, they were not sym-linked automatically. So
this would be another reason to at least try to guess the "correct"
place of the binaries.

Regards
Stefan