Re: MacTeX 2007 and documentation

Ted Pavlic <ted.pavlic@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But it doesn't work properly, and you need to be an expert in command
line work and in TeXLive to deal with things when they don't. That
means you need expertise in your host operating system as well.

You didn't mention locate in your CLI discussion. Because updatedb
runs every night by default, I've typically use something like:

locate memoir | grep pdf

or, perhaps (with bash):

locate memoir | grep "\(pdf\|dvi\)"

or, if that gives you non-TeX related stuff:

locate memoir | grep "\(pdf\|dvi\)" | grep tex

I have several TeX distributions loaded, so usually something like
this works well for me:

locate memoir | grep pdf | grep gwTeX | head -1 | xargs open

that immediately opens the first match. If I wanted to, I could setup
a (bash) alias like:

function texman () { locate $* | grep pdf | grep texlive | head -1
| xargs open; }

then I could do:

texman memoir

and that would give me memman.pdf automatically. Here's another idea:

function texlist () { locate $* | grep "\(pdf\|dvi\)" | grep "\
(texlive\|gwTeX\)"; }

Assuming that your updatedb is running (i.e., assuming your machine is
on when updatedb is supposed to run), solutions like these can work a
little better than texdoc because they sweep across your entire
system.

Umm.

Those solutions probably do work better, but it's impossible for me to
remember and generally all a bit too complicated for GUI people like me.

I'm not someone who lives at the command line, you see. I have no fear
of typing commands, but I am completely incapable of remembering the
syntax of Unix commands. I have never been able to do so. I'm not sure
why: I think it's because the documention is so impenetrable that I've
never been able properly to understand any man page, so I can't fit what
I've read into a coherent logical structure, which means I can't keep it
in memory.

I use command line stuff only when I have to. That's largely because I
cannot recall the incantations required. If I don't have someone
telling me what to type, I have to read the man page every time I want
to use a Unix command - unless it's something I've put in a reference
file for me to copy-paste at a later date. And I find man pages to be
very unhelpful at the best of times - the worst computer documentation
standard in the world if you ask me.

I've never been able to work out how to make intelligent use of grep,
for example, much to my annoyance.

So thank you for your suggestions, but I need something that's
user-friendly, I'm afraid.

If I'd want to have to deal with that sort of thing, I'd be running a
plain Unix of some sort, you know.

Rowland.

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Relevant Pages

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