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I have some local LaTeX files in Dropbox and have not been able to make LaTeX recognize them. It does find my local texmf folder, but that doesn't help me. I am working under Fedora 17 and uname -r returns: 3.4.4-3.fc17.x86_64, however I do not have admin access.

I suspect this may have something to do with setting paths, but despite several attempts I have not managed to do it. Could anybody please help me solve this? Under Windows with MiKTeX I have managed to get this to work.

Added: I've tried to add the following to my .login and .cshrc

export TEXMFHOME='~/Dropbox/Local TeX Files':
setenv TEXMFHOME='~/Dropbox/Local TeX Files':

and same thing with TEXINPUTS. However, none of this has worked for me. I know that the .login and .cshrc are read when I login, but either I have the variables wrong, the syntax, or there is an issue with assigning paths to Dropbox folders at startup.

Martin Schröder
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Bok
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1 Answers1

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I'm writing a document between Windows 7 and Fedora 17 using LaTeX and Dropbox. My solution is to use a LaTeX distribution which supports both systems (TeXLive 2012) and make sure both have been updated at roughly the same time, as to avoid package version problems. The files that LaTeX needs to compile and produce the document are stored in the Dropbox folder. So far the document compiles identically on both systems and I can switch whenever necessary.

A path had to be added to a bash file (.bash_profile) in my home folder to allow tlmgr and texdoc to work under Fedora 17 but other than that is was very straight forward. This path is specific to TeXLive 2012 and a 32-bit Fedora installation.

PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2012/bin/i386-linux:$PATH

(from http://www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html)

Also, you will need to install an editor, such as TeXWorks, as I don't think the linux download comes with one. http://www.tug.org/texworks/#Getting_TeXworks

Not having root privileges might be a problem. You will need to see if your system manager can install it or give you sudo privileges, as the install and tlmgr need to higher privileges than a normal user.

I hope this helps.

P.S. I'm fairly new to linux and managed to get it working so it is possible :)

henrique
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Darling
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  • "A path had to be added to a bash file in my home folder": this is my problem since I don't know which file to edit and which path variable to change. – Bok Oct 09 '12 at 15:58
  • Ok, the answer has been modified. To make fedora use a folder when looking for things that would normally be in the bash folder you need to edit the .bash_profile file which is hidden in your home directory. – Darling Oct 09 '12 at 17:02
  • If any of my comments have been useful you can increase the score of the answer. If it solves your problem you can accept it as the solution with the tick. :) – Darling Oct 09 '12 at 17:09
  • Also, download texlive from the above website and not using yum. The fedora repos are going to be out of date. – Darling Oct 09 '12 at 22:22
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    In order to make TeX and BibTeX/Biber look for files in some non standard directory one has also to set TEXINPUTS and BIBINPUTS – egreg Oct 09 '12 at 22:45
  • @Darling: In the definition of PATH that you suggested there is nothing about the Dropbox folder. Is this really all you had to add to make LaTeX find .bib and .sty files in you have in Dropbox? – Bok Oct 10 '12 at 13:47
  • @Bok I open my .tex file, which is in my dropbox folder, using texworks and the rest is history. When called from Texworks, the typesetting engine (pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, and so on plus biber make glossaie) understands where everything is. – Darling Oct 11 '12 at 13:30