[Mac OS X TeX] tetex, xdvi, emacs under X11 et al.

[Enrico Franconi]

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This is what I have done to have a complete environment with tetex,
emacs under X11, xdvi, pdf viewer, ispell etc:
1) install XFree86 4.0.2 + update 4.0.3 (delete first XTools with its
   /usr/X11R6 if you have it)
2) download fink from fink.sourceforge.net, and install it (on /sw)
3) as root, not with sudo (use sudo -s):
   > fink install emacs
   > fink install tetex
   > fink install ghostscript
   > fink install ispell
   (it takes ages!)
4) Have your local texmf, say, in /usr/local/lib/texmf;
   add in your .cshrc:
   setenv TEXMFMAIN   /sw/share/texmf
   setenv TEXMFLOCAL  /usr/local/lib/texmf
   setenv TEXMF       '{'\!\!"$TEXMFLOCAL":\!\!"$TEXMFMAIN"'}'
   setenv DICTIONARY /sw/lib/english.hash
5) run 'source ~/.cshrc;sudo texhash'
6) save the dvipdf script I'm attaching in a visible path. It is
   simply a sequence of dvips (with pdf option) and gs (as pdf
   converter).  The dvipdf is my definitive alternative to pdftex: it
   works with the dvi generated by any standard latex file, while
   pdftex does not work with most of my files.
7) Download the new Acrobat Reader for MacOSX.
8) install auctex for emacs; in tex-site add the entries:
   (list "View" "dvipdf %d;open -a 'Acrobat Reader' %s.pdf " 'TeX-run-command t nil)
   (list "Postscript" "dvips -ta4 %d -o %f " 'TeX-run-command t nil)
   (list "PDF" "dvipdf %d " 'TeX-run-command t nil)
   The view command under auctex-emacs will automatically preview the
   dvi file using acrobat reader. The apple Preview has problems with
   fonts.
9) at this point everything works, under standard Aqua. The only point
   is that your emacs is the "poor" one: no mouse, no frames, no
   colour. In order to have an X11 environment, you can additionally
   install XonX (i.e., the modified XDarwin) from sourceforge. Do NOT
   install XTools which rewrites on top of the standard XFree86
   libraries. I find XonX still unreliable (in particular on a
   powerbook, where the keyboard disappears from time to time...). xdvi
   and ghostscript work well under X11, but I believe that the dvipdf
   alternative is preferable also under X11.

If you have suggestions on how to do it in a better way, let me know.

cheers
-- e.

Enrico Franconi                     - franconi at cs.man.ac.uk
University of Manchester            - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/
Department of Computer Science      - Phone: +44 (161) 275 6170
Manchester M13 9PL, UK              - Fax:   +44 (161) 275 6204


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#!/bin/sh
# Convert DVI to PDF, based on ps2pdf
# Modified by Enrico Franconi <franconi at cs.man.ac.uk>

OPTIONS=""
while true
do
	case "$1" in
	-*) OPTIONS="$OPTIONS $1" ;;
	*)  break ;;
	esac
	shift
done

if [ $# -lt 1 -o $# -gt 2 ]; then
	echo "Usage: `basename $0` [options...] input.dvi [output.pdf]" 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

infile=$1;

if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
	case "${infile}" in
	  *.dvi)	base=`basename ${infile} .dvi` ;;
	  *)		base=`basename ${infile}` ;;
	esac
	outfile=${base}.pdf
else
	outfile=$2
fi

dvips -ta4 -Ppdf -G0 -f $infile -o $base.ps
gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=$outfile -sPAPERSIZE=a4 $base.ps