[Macpartners] LaTex

[Albert Willis]

On Nov 3, 2005, at 10:37 AM, Annika Pfluger wrote:

> Hi Danielle,
>
> I use TeTex (Latex) with TexShop (the interface for using Latex) on  
> my Mac.  First you need to make sure that you have the Apple  
> Developer Tools installed on your mac and then install Fink  
> Commander (http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/). Launch Fink  
> Commander and search for TexTex and run the full installation.  The  
> last step is to install TexShop (http://www.apple.com/downloads/ 
> macosx/unix_open_source/texshop.html). Launch TexShop and change a  
> couple of the default paths in preferences:
>
> 	- use /sw/bin for the path to pdftex
> 	- use /usr/local/bin for the path to latex
>
> There are a lot of steps, but it should all run pretty easily once  
> you get started and it's all free. Good luck!
>
> Annika

I would like to add a little context for those that may be confused  
about the differences in the advice being suggested for installing  
TeTex.

There are two popular package managers for Unix software on Mac OS X:  
Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/) and Darwin Ports (http:// 
darwinports.opendarwin.org/). Fink and Darwin Ports allow a user to  
build and install software from source automatically; they both deal  
with any dependencies that may be required to install the software.  
Fink and Darwin Ports require Apple's developers tools to be  
installed. The CDs or DVD that came with your Mac has the developer  
tools on them; you can also create an Apple Developer Connection  
account for free and download them from http://developer.apple.com/.

Annika's instructions are for using Fink, which is a fine way of  
getting TeTex onto a machine.

If the plan is to install other Unix packages--not everything you may  
want has a Mac OS X-style installer--using Fink or Darwin Ports makes  
that easier than doing it manually with downloading source code,  
building things in the correct order, figuring out dependencies, etc.

Bottom line: because of flexibility offered by Mac OS X, there are  
different ways of accomplishing the same task, depending on the  
situation.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program. ;-)

   -- Al




______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
awillis at mit.edu


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/attachments/20051103/2a1e5d81/attachment.htm