[R] latex{Hmisc} cannot find xdvi on MAC OS X

[Charles C. Berry]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:

> Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
>> Charles C. Berry wrote:
>>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
>>>
>>>> Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:
>>>>> Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:
>>>>>> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>>>>>> It eliminates Hmisc and R by giving you a tex file.  Now its up
>>>>>>> to you to figure out how to handle tex files on your system.
>>>>>> I have suggested the student try options(xdvicmd="fullpathtoxdvi")
>>>>>> to see what happens.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here is the result of trying the above.
>>>>>
>>>>>> latex(describe(ps1d))
>>>>> This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>>>>>  %&-line parsing enabled.
>>>>> entering extended mode
>>>>> (/tmp/RtmpMi0s95/file10d63af1.tex
>>>>> LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
>>>>> Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for english, usenglishmax,
>>>>> dumylang, noh
>>>>> yphenation, arabic, basque, bulgarian, coptic, welsh, czech, slovak,
>>>>> german, ng
>>>>> erman, danish, esperanto, spanish, catalan, galician, estonian, farsi,
>>>>> finnish,
>>>>>  french, greek, monogreek, ancientgreek, croatian, hungarian,
>>>>> interlingua, ibyc
>>>>> us, indonesian, icelandic, italian, latin, mongolian, dutch, norsk,
>>>>> polish, por
>>>>> tuguese, pinyin, romanian, russian, slovenian, uppersorbian, serbian,
>>>>> swedish,
>>>>> turkish, ukenglish, ukrainian, loaded.
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/report.cls
>>>>> Document Class: report 2005/09/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/setspace/setspace.sty
>>>>> Package: `setspace' 6.7 <2000/12/01>
>>>>> ) (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ltxmisc/relsize.sty)
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/geometry/geometry.sty
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/graphics/keyval.sty)
>>>>> (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/xelatex/xetexconfig/geometry.cfg))
>>>>>
>>>>> No file file10d63af1.aux.
>>>>> [1] [2] (./file10d63af1.aux) )
>>>>> Output written on file10d63af1.dvi (2 pages, 10000 bytes).
>>>>> Transcript written on file10d63af1.log.
>>>>> /usr/texbin/xdvi: line 1: kpsewhich: command not found
>>>>> /usr/texbin/xdvi: line 46: exec: xdvi-xaw.bin: not found
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So, it appears to that something about the MAC environment is
>>>>> not being passed to the shell that is invoked when latex() is
>>>>> called in this way.
>>>>
>>>> That's exactly what it looks like.  Shame on Mac "-)
>>>>
>>>> On my linux systems xdvi is in /usr/bin
>>>
>>> On my leopard, it is in /usr/texbin (as seen above) and
>>>
>>>     Sys.setenv( PATH=paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"),"usr/texbin",sep=":") )
>>>
>>> allows
>>>     system("xdvi")
>>>
>>> and
>>
>> Excellent.  I much prefer solutions to workarounds.  A .profile or
>> .bashrc type of file can also extend the PATH this way.
>>
>> Thanks Chuck
>> Frank
>
> My student tried this but had the same result (failed) result.
>

What exactly is 'this'?

The Sys.setenv() command or the .profile/.bashrc approach?

What does

   list.files( tail( strsplit(Sys.getenv("PATH"),":" )[[1]],1))

reveal after 'this' is done?

I get

   [1] "T1Wrap"              "a2ping"              "afm2pl"
   [4] "afm2tfm"             "aleph"               "allcm" 
[deleted]
[109] "kpsepath"            "kpsereadlink"        "kpsestat"
[112] "kpsetool"            "kpsewhere"           "kpsewhich"
[115] "kpsexpand"           "lacheck"             "lambda"
[more deleted]

If s/he does not get something very much like the above after Sys.setenv, 
then either s/he mistyped the Sys.setenv() line, or something is different 
(wrong?) in his/her local setup.

HTH,

Chuck

p.s. FWIW

> latex(describe(as.data.frame(diag(10))))

seems to run just fine iff I run the Sys.setenv() as above. I do have to 
zoom out, 'though.

-- 
> Kevin E. Thorpe
> Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program
> Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
> Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
> email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.6057
>

Charles C. Berry                            (858) 534-2098
                                             Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901