[R] LaTeX in system()

[Erik Iverson]

Are you running R from the shell, or R.app?

I don't own or use a Mac, but I've seen something like this happen to 
people running R through ESS on some Emacs on a Mac.

Apologies for lack of precision here in terminology, but it had 
something to do with the PATH getting set through a shell initialization 
file (e.g., .cshrc, .bashrc).  Thus, starting in a shell, the path was 
set properly.  But the path was not set in the 'Mac GUI environment', so 
things started 'from there' (i.e., by clicking something), did not know 
about the path.

If it is a situation like the above, it really has nothing to do with R 
directly.  If that is the problem, there is probably some way to set 
environment variables so that the Mac GUI shell knows about them.

HTH,
Erik Iverson

Christoph Heibl wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> I want to run latex from an R script:
> 
>     system("latex mysource.tex")
> 
> or:
> 
>     texi2dvi("mysource.tex", pdf = TRUE, clean = FALSE, quiet =         
> TRUE, texi2dvi = latex)
> 
> but latex does not seem to be on the search path:
> 
>     /bin/sh: line 1: latex: command not found.
> 
> Although 'printenv PATH' tells me that the usr/texbin is looked for 
> executables:
> 
> /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:/sw/bin:/sw/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/texbin:/usr/X11R6/bin 
> 
> 
> Or am I wrong here?
> 
> In any case this is strange because if I call latex from the Terminal 
> shell it runs without problems.  On the other hand texi2dvi from the 
> tools package also does not work (for the same reason?)
> 
> I use R version 2.6.2 on Intel Mac OS X 10.4.11
> 
> Why is there a difference between the way the call to latex behaves 
> directly in the shell or via the R system () command?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any advice!
> Christoph
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________
> 
> Christoph Heibl
> 
> Systematic Botany
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
> Menzinger Str. 67
> D-80638 München
> GERMANY
> 
> phone:     +49-(0)89-17861-251
> e-mail:    heibl at lmu.de
> 
> http://www.botanik.biologie.uni-muenchen.de/botsyst/heibl/ch-home.html
> 
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> 
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