Re: [matplotlib-devel] Add some caching to texmanager.py?

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen Walton <ste...@cs...> writes:

    Stephen>        TEXMFOUTPUT Normally, TeX puts its output files in
    Stephen> the current directory.  If any output file cannot be
    Stephen> opened there, it tries to open it in the directory
    Stephen> specified in the environment variable TEXM- FOUTPUT.
    Stephen> There is no default value for that variable.  For
    Stephen> example, if you say tex paper and the current directory
    Stephen> is not writable, if TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, TeX
    Stephen> attempts to create /tmp/paper.log (and /tmp/paper.dvi, if
    Stephen> any output is produced.)

Hmm, that looks familiar -- I think I did come across that.  But this
will be a bit of a pain to set from matplotlib, since we are making
calls to os.popen.  We might have to do something like

  os.popen('export TEXMFOUTPUT=/some/path; run some command')

and then deal with platform and shell dependent differences in how to
set environment variables.  Is there a better way?  Me thinks it is
better to make this a FAQ and advise people working in non-writable
dirs to set this var themselves.

Thanks for the help...

JDH