[TxMt] Re: modifying environmental variables for latex

[Alex Ross]

On Oct 24, 2008, at 1:03 PM, Dan Lussier wrote:

> Thanks for the info.  I guess I assumed that it was TEXINPUT as I
> have done in the past for configuring the shell to process LaTex from
> the command line.  I would suggest that this be more clearly noted in
> the TM documentation so that this type of confusion can be avoided in
> the future.
>
> Also - when I was trying to implement TEXINPUTS I initially had a
> problem that my effort to add to what I assume is an existing
> variable within TM simply overwrote the whole thing.  The result was
> that pdftex was no longer finding even the simplest package.  Again,
> contrary to what I have done in the shell the typical bash shell
> syntax of $VAR:[additon to var] didn't work at all.  I had success
> though when I found the page (link below) on nabble that indicated
> that to append to existing variables you need to have a leading colon
> on the path like :[additoin to var].  This is another point that
> would be good to include more clearly in the TM documentation.

This isn't really a feature of TextMate though… It's another bizarre  
feature of TeX engines :).

It is documented in man pdflatex.

        TEXINPUTS
               Search path for \input and \openin files.  This should   
probably
               start  with  ``.'',  so  that user files are found  
before system
               files.  An empty path component will be replaced with  
the  paths
               defined  in  the  texmf.cnf file.  For example, set  
TEXINPUTS to
               ".:/home/usr/tex:"  to  prepend  the   current    
directory   and
               ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.

—Alex