[texworks] Path and preferences

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

On 2013-01-30 09:26, Alain Delmotte wrote:
> In TeXworks I had to put the path of ConTeXt before the path to TeX
> Live; if not TeXworks was looking in TeX Live first, finding there
> some of the required, but outdated, files for ConTeXt.
>
> My question is: are the paths in "Preferences / Composition
> necessary"; are they not redundant with the Windows' path? 

Yes and no. Tw uses the preferences paths first, and if it doesn't find
the program it is looking for, falls back to the $PATH variable (at
least that's what it should do IIRC).

The reason why the Tw preferences take precedence is twofold. First, you
might not always have the TeX binary in the PATH (depending on how you
install which distro on which OS). Second, you may want to override the
default TeX distro (e.g., your system administrator installed an old
version, you installed a new version in your own directory => you want
your version, not the one in $PATH).

Thus, you should be fine to simply remove all paths in the preferences
(though I'd recommend to save them somewhere first just in case ;)).

Cheers,
Stefan