Manual: (info "(emacs)Mac Environment Variables") explains Mac OS 8/9 but not X

[Christian Schlauer]

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and the precise symptoms of the bug:

>From the CVS Emacs Manual:

,----[ (info "(emacs)Mac Environment Variables") ]
| On Mac OS X, when Emacs is run in a terminal, it inherits the values of
| environment variables from the shell from which it is invoked.
| However, when it is run from the Finder as a GUI application, it
| inherits no environment variable values.
`----

That is all about Mac OS X in (info "(emacs)Mac Environment
Variables"). The manual does not explain how to set environment
variables in Mac OS X, but that information is frequently needed, for
example in order to run LaTeX from within Emacs (at least with AUCTeX,
but I guess Emacs' TeX-mode has to find the executables as well?): if
one installs TeX Live, the installation procedure tells the user to
add TeX Live's bin/ directory to the path by adding a line to
~/.profile -- after that, the user can run LaTeX in a Terminal window,
but running LaTeX from an Emacs that has been started by clicking on
the Emacs icon in the Mac OS X `dock' does not work.

The reason for this is already described in the Emacs manual ("when it
is run from the Finder as a GUI application, it inherits no
environment variable values"), so that's good, but it would be even
better if the manual would tell the user how to overcome this problem
in Mac OS X. There are several solutions, (at least?) two are
described in the Emacs wiki
<URL:http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/MacOSTweaks> (search for
`finder' in that document), and the following one:

,----[ Output of `defaults --help' on Mac OS X 10.3.9 ]
| Command line interface to a user's defaults.
| Syntax:
| 
| 'defaults' [-currentHost | -host <hostname>] followed by one of the following:
| 
|   read                                 shows all defaults
|   read <domain>                        shows defaults for given domain
|   read <domain> <key>                  shows defaults for given domain, key
| 
|   read-type <domain> <key>             shows the type for the given domain, 
key
| 
|   write <domain> <domain_rep>          writes domain (overwrites existing)
|   write <domain> <key> <value>         writes key for domain
| 
|   rename <domain> <old_key> <new_key>  renames old_key to new_key
| 
|   delete <domain>                      deletes domain
|   delete <domain> <key>                deletes key in domain
| 
|   domains                              lists all domains
|   find <word>                          lists all entries containing word
|   help                                 print this help
| 
| <domain> is ( <domain_name> | -app <application_name> | -globalDomain )
| 
| <value> is one of:
|   <value_rep>
|   -string <string_value>
|   -data <hex_digits>
|   -int[eger] <integer_value>
|   -float  <floating-point_value>
|   -bool[ean] (true | false | yes | no)
|   -date <date_rep>
|   -array <value1> <value2> ...
|   -array-add <value1> <value2> ...
|   -dict <key1> <value1> <key2> <value2> ...
|   -dict-add <key1> <value1> ...
`----

Next time I'll have access to a Mac, I'll try to make a command line
out of the above that will create the necessary entry in the
`environment.plist' file so that Emacs (started from the finder) can
find the TeX executables.

I think one of these methods should be documented in the manual. If it
is possible to do via the command line with `defaults <some_magic>', I
think this way should be documented, as doing it via
<URL:http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html> is not easier,
IMHO.

In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0)
 of 2005-06-18 on tesla.local
Distributor `Apple Computers', version 10.3.9
configured using `configure '--without-x' '--prefix=/usr/local''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Info

[ skipped the rest, not relevant ]