Hi,
I've got some small suggestions for the LyX-Mac version of lyxrc.dist
in the LyX 1.4.2 Application bundle.
Prompted by a problem with imagemagick's convert utility (which
wasn't working out of the box for me), Bennett told me that the
definition of PATH had changed from what it was in 1.4.1. Looking at
lyxrc.dist for LyX 1.4.2, I think one should set the order of
directories differently. People will currently be getting their tex
(tetex) distributions from different places - mainly gwTeX,
darwinports and fink. Imagemagick, on the other hand, could come from
even more different sources (could be installed into /usr/local/bin
by some third-party installer having nothing to do with TeX).
Ultimately, it will have to be up to the user to set the PATH
correctly in the Preferences, but to make it more _likely_ to work
out of the box I think the following sequence would be better in PATH:
\path_prefix "/usr/local/teTeX/bin/i386-apple-darwin-current:/usr/
local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current:/sw/bin:/opt/local/teTeX/
bin:/opt/local/bin:/\
usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin"
Essentially this looks first in the directories that are most likely
to have the most up-to-date installations of a given tex-related or
imagemagick executable.
Also, in lyxrc.dist, I saw that the FORMATS section could be
improved. Here is what it says now:
#
# FORMATS SECTION ##########################
#
\format "fig" "fig" "FIG" "" "open /Applications/Utilities/X11.app &&
export DISPLAY=:0.0 && xfig" "open /Applications/Utilities/X11.app &&
export DISPLAY=:0.0 && xf\
ig"
\format "rtf" "rtf" "Rich Text Format" "" "auto" "auto"
It may not be wise to specify the absolute path and application name
of X11.app for the "fig" format. Instead, it seems to be better to
simply replace this by
"open-x11 xfig"
This is a command that is present on OSX 10.3 and up, and I think
10.3 is the system requirement for lyx 1.4.2 anyway. So there's no
compatibility problem if one uses this command.
Jens
