[texhax] Wrong latex getting used.

[Axel E. Retif]

Rolf,

I'm ccing your message below to Richard Koch, MacTeX maintainer.

(By the way, I would advise you to subscribe to the Mac OS X TeX  
mailing list:

http://email.esm.psu.edu/mailman/listinfo/macosx-tex )

MacTeX installs a control panel in System Preferences, called TeX  
distribution, that lets you shift from one TeX distribution to another  
with just a mouse click; for example, you can have TeXLive-2007,  
TeXLive-2008, gwTeX, Fink's teTeX and MacPorts TeX, and choose which  
one you want to use at any time.

So check the control panel, and see which distribution is selected in  
it.

If that doesn't work. You can do three things: 1) reinstall MacTeX so  
it again takes control of your distributions; 2) tell Fink to  
uninstall teTeX (but that would be a problem if you have Fink's  
packages that depend on it); or 3) comment out momentarily the Fink  
line ( . /sw/bin/init.sh in .bashrc, and something similar in .cshrc),  
logout ---or restart your computer--- and see if your system now  
recognizes TeXLive as your valid distribution.

Best,

Axel

On  2 Mar, 2009, at 17:18, Rolf Turner wrote:

> This is really more a problem with Mac OS X than with latex, ...
> But I don't know where else to turn and this list is usually very
> helpful.  Said he hopefully.
>
> Recently I unwisely did a re-install of LaTex on my Imac --- using,
> I *think* ``sudo fink install latex''.  Can't even remember why I
> did this. :-(
>
> Ever since, things that used to work now don't.
>
> This morning I tried to process a powerdot presentation to which
> I had made some slight adjustments, and got errors in respect of
> xkeyval --- it complained that I had requested a newer version
> of xkeyval than was available, and then threw an error about
> an undefined control sequence.  I can give further details if
> these are relevant, but I don't think so.
>
> Upon investigation I found that the xkeyval package in
>
> 	/sw/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex
>
> was indeed out of date, and the latex that gets used is in
> /sw/bin.  But there is a perfectly up-to-date xkeyval in
>
> 	/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/tex/latex
>
> which seems to be what is pointed to by the symbolic links inside
>
> 	/Library/TeX/Distributions
>
> I would have thought that this last would be what would get used
> by latex by default under Mac OSX (I must confess that I really
> don't understand the convolutions that Mac OSX superimposes upon
> Unix) but it seems not.  As I said above, /sw/bin/latex seems to
> get used and this seems to draw upon the out-of-date stuff in
> /sw/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex.
>
> There is a /usr/texbin that appears automagically in my path,
> and this seems to point at the right thing.  I tried setting
> my path explicitly in my .cshrc file, putting /usr/texbin ahead
> of /sw/bin.  But blow me down, when I echo my path afterwards,
> /sw/bin and /sw/sbin are always the first two entries in the
> path, no matter what I tell it.  (I *hate* it when computers refuse
> to do what you tell them!)  And the wrong latex still gets
> used.
>
> How can I get the /sw/bin/latex out of the way?  Does anyone out there
> understand Mac OSX enough to help me?
>
> Thanks.
>
> 	cheers,
>
> 		Rolf Turner
>
>
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