[OS X TeX] Which distribution?

[Matthias Damm]

Claus,

You have to distinguish between the TeX distribution and the frontend/editor.

> I would like to have
> - a powerful TeX distribution,
> - which runs nativly on MacOS X

Use Gerben's Distribution, as Bruno has mentioned before.
It ist very up-to-date, Gerben supplies many additional packages etc.
It also comes with a quite sophisticated installer.

If there really is something which is not included in the tetex
distribution it's easy to include it manually into your texmf.local tree
via the finder or with minimal Unix knowledge. I have included the most
recent hyperref, jurabib and the new KOMA-script, no problem.

> - and has a nice GUI.

iTeXMac and TeXShop both use Gerben's distribution, so you can install both
and choose (they are both quite small).
It's hard to tell which one is better - TeXShop is beautiful but somewhat
limited in its options, iTeXMac has more options, but still has some
glitches. The editor is slower than TeXShop's. There is a wide range of
external editors however.

> - It should be free,
> - still supported and
> - has it's packages up-to-date.
> - It also should use the standard TeX tree (TeX-Directory-Standard, TDS)
>   like TeX-Live does.

This is all true for the solution suggested above.

Possible alternatives were the TeX package installed by fink and OzTeX, but
I can't see any pro argument for them.

Look at the list archive, nobody here seems to have real
distribution-connected problems...

Best regards,
Matthias
-- 
Matthias Damm <m.damm at web.de>
PGP key available
"Ein Optimist, wer unsere Welt für die beste aller möglichen hält;
ein Pessimist, wer fürchtet, daß dies stimmt" - James Branch Cabell

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