On 16 Mar 2015, at 13:48, John Fox wrote:

> Dear Gabor,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gábor Csárdi [mailto:csardi.ga...@gmail.com]
>> Sent: March-16-15 12:39 PM
>> To: John Fox
>> Cc: Simon Urbanek; R-SIG-Mac
>> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
>>
>> John,
>>
>> my guess is that on OSX, >95% of the users have 
>> https://tug.org/mactex/,
>> which seems to have pdflatex in /usr/texbin. If it is not there, then 
>> most
>> likely the user does not have pdflatex installed, and you can give a 
>> note or
>> warning about it.
>
> If that's the case, then this certainly makes sense as a solution. In 
> fact, if the Rcmdr (development version) doesn't detect pdflatex it 
> provides a menu item and dialog under its Tools menu that will take 
> the user to <http://www.tug.org/mactex/>.

That's what Texpad does (https://www.texpadapp.com).

>
>>
>> If you want to be sure, you can check other tex distributions for 
>> OSX, to be
>> honest I don't know any other. Based on http://mactex-
>> wiki.tug.org/wiki/index.php/Distribution_Matrix pretty much MacTeX is 
>> the
>> only player. Maybe people also install TeX with brew, so it might be 
>> worth
>> checking that, too.
>
> I think that I'll initially go for the simpler solution. I suspect 
> that most Rcmdr Mac OS X users won't have LaTeX installed prior to 
> installing the Rcmdr package. I can put an explanation in the help 
> page for the dialog.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion,
> John
>
>>
>> Gabor
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 12:25 PM, John Fox <j...@mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>>
>>
>>      Dear Simon,
>>
>>      Thanks for this, and to the others who responded to my question.
>> The FAQ and Matt Denwood's response jogged my memory, and reminded
>> me that I encountered this problem before.
>>
>>      In this case, I don't see a good solution, but I'll think about the
>> problem some more.
>>
>>      Without providing too many tedious details, the development
>> version of the Rcmdr package checks at startup what resources are 
>> available
>> to it, including pdflatex, and configures itself accordingly. Having
>> inexperienced users edit, e.g., their .Renviron files is probably a 
>> non-starter.
>> The Rcmdr could offer to do this at the user's option (it already 
>> provides
>> dialogs that guide the user to locations of missing software like 
>> LaTeX and
>> pandoc), but I'd still have to be able to figure out whether pdflatex 
>> is
>> available and if so where it's located.
>>
>>      Ian Gow suggested using locate, but I apparently can't rely on a
>> locate database having been compiled -- it wasn't on my Mac -- and 
>> the
>> overhead of compiling the locate db is excessive for a start-up 
>> check.
>>
>>      Again, thanks for explaining the problem.
>>
>>      John
>>
>>      > -----Original Message-----
>>      > From: Simon Urbanek [mailto:simon.urba...@r-project.org]
>>      > Sent: March-16-15 10:39 AM
>>      > To: John Fox
>>      > Cc: Ian Gow; r-sig-mac@r-project.org
>>      > Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
>>      >
>>      > John,
>>      >
>>      > see R for Mac FAQ 10.13: I get “command not found” in the GUI 
>> yet
>> it works
>>      > in the Terminal – why?
>>      >
>>      > Cheers,
>>      > Simon
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > > On Mar 15, 2015, at 6:21 PM, John Fox <j...@mcmaster.ca>
>> wrote:
>>      > >
>>      > > Dear Ian,
>>      > >
>>      > > Thanks for this. Please see below:
>>      > >
>>      > >> -----Original Message-----
>>      > >> From: Ian Gow [mailto:iand...@gmail.com]
>>      > >> Sent: March-15-15 5:07 PM
>>      > >> To: John Fox
>>      > >> Cc: r-sig-mac@r-project.org
>>      > >> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] checking for pdflatex
>>      > >>
>>      > >> I think it's driven by the PATH variable, which appears to 
>> differ
>> for
>>      > >> me between RStudio and R from Terminal on the one hand and
>> R.app on
>>      > >> the other.
>>      > >
>>      > > Yes, I understand that, though I don't understand why there's a
>>      > > difference in the path.
>>      > >
>>      > >>
>>      > >>> Sys.getenv("PATH")
>>      > >> [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin"
>>      > >>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>>      > >> pdflatex
>>      > >>       ""
>>      > >>
>>      > >> If I add
>>      > >>
>>      > >> Sys.setenv(PATH=paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"),"/opt/local/bin",
>> sep=":"))
>>      > >>
>>      > >> to ~/.Rprofile then R.app finds pdflatex (from MacPorts in my
>> case).
>>      > >>
>>      > >>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>>      > >>                  pdflatex
>>      > >> "/opt/local/bin/pdflatex"
>>      > >>> Sys.getenv("PATH")
>>      > >> [1] 
>> "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin"
>>      > >
>>      > > The problem for me is to determine whether pdflatex is installed
>>      > > *without* knowing in advance where it's installed. I haven't
>> described
>>      > > the purpose of this, and, in the interest of brevity, won't for 
>> the
>>      > > time-being, but it may also prove necessary to determine where
>> pdflatex
>>      > resides.
>>      > >
>>      > > Best,
>>      > > John
>>      > >
>>      > >>
>>      > >>
>>      > >> On 15 Mar 2015, at 16:46, John Fox wrote:
>>      > >>
>>      > >>> Dear list members,
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> I need to determine whether pdflatex is installed and have
>> been
>>      > >>> doing that via Sys.which("pdflatex"). This works when R is run
>> in a
>>      > >>> terminal window (or in RStudio):
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>>      > >>>           pdflatex
>>      > >>> "/usr/texbin/pdflatex"
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> but not from R.app:
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>>> Sys.which("pdflatex")
>>      > >>> pdflatex
>>      > >>>   ""
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> The session info is the same in both cases:
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> -------------- snip ----------------
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>>> sessionInfo()
>>      > >>> R version 3.1.3 (2015-03-09)
>>      > >>> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit) Running under:
>> OS X
>>      > >>> 10.10.2 (Yosemite)
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> locale:
>>      > >>> [1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-
>>      > 8/en_CA.UTF-
>>      > >> 8
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> attached base packages:
>>      > >>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
>>  base
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> -------------- snip ----------------
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> Why is the result different? Is there a better way to check 
>> for
>> the
>>      > >>> presence of pdflatex?
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> Any help would be appreciated.
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> Thanks,
>>      > >>> John
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> ------------------------------------------------
>>      > >>> John Fox, Professor
>>      > >>> McMaster University
>>      > >>> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
>>      > >>> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
>>      > >>>
>>      > >>> _______________________________________________
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>>      > >>> R-SIG-Mac@r-project.org
>>      > >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>      > >
>>      > >
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>>
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>
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