I would like you to make it easier to get “Compile Directly to Latex PDF” to work if your pdflatex is not in /usr/texbin. I would like you to make it possible to use programs other than pdflatex - like xelatex.
Apologies if I have missed something but I have looked before making this post. I looked in the manual and on the forum, where I found one fix that is similar to mine but didn’t work on my system.
I used to use this feature a couple of years ago and when I tried to use it recently I couldn’t find the menu entry in compile. I knew from the manual that you needed to have latex but I knew I had latex. So I updated my latex distribution, updated multimarkdown, re-installed Scrivener, all to no avail. All this took several hours because I was using hotel broadband and my phone for internet connections. Then I decided to search through the forums which took more time because I haven’t used the forum for so long that I had forgotten my username. On the forum I found instructions about how to fix the problem by disabling the system integrity protection and creating a folder and a symbolic link so that when Scrivener goes to /usr/texbin/pdflatex it gets pdflatex (or xetex).
This didn’t work - it created the menu entry in Scrivener but the compile didn’t run because other files were ‘missing’. What worked for me was to create a symbolic link between /usr/texbin and the texbin folder in my latex distribution.
Obviously the simplest fix here (from the user’s point of view) would be for you to restore the old functionality, so that Scrivener just does what the manual says it does, and works if you have pdflatex. But it would certainly add value for me if you made it possible to choose between xetex and pdflatex.
I hope this is helpful. I think that Scrivener is an amazing program. I haven’t used it as much as I would like to because I haven’t had time to learn how to use it effectively. However, I think I am making progress and I am looking for ways to switch all my writing to Scrivener.