[vox-tech] bash environment variables (and KDE)

[Jonathan Stickel]

There are still a couple things in linux that seem to be unnecessarily 
convoluted and really bug me.  One is sound, which I've finally managed 
to work around using alsa and dmix.

The other is handling user-specified shell environment variables.  I use 
bash, and by trial and error I've found I can put what I want in 
.bashrc.  IIRC, I remember reading that this really isn't the place for 
custom variables, but this is what has worked for me.  Recently, I've 
defined $TEXINPUTS, a path variable for tex/latex.  When I run latex 
from shell, it uses the path I've defined by $TEXINPUTS correctly. 
However, if I start Emacs from KDE's kmenu, $TEXINPUTS is NOT read, and 
thus running latex from within Emacs doesn't work like I expect.  It 
turns out that KDE, when started through xdm/kdm, does not read .bashrc 
at all 
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2002/debian-kde-200209/msg00083.html). 
  However, .bashrc does get read when starting a shell from within KDE.

So my question is:  what really is the correct place to put 
user-specific bash variables?  And, how do I make KDE read them when 
logging in from kdm?

Thanks,
Jonathan