[OS X TeX] Installing two front ends?

[Joseph Slater]

On Monday, September 2, 2002, at 02:01  PM, Juan Manuel Palacios wrote:

> 	Thanks for the prompt reply and your warm welcome Joseph, very much 
> appreciated!
>
> On Monday, September 2, 2002, at 11:47  AM, Joseph Slater wrote:
>
>> Open the dvi in TeXShop or iTeXMac and it will be converted to pdf 
>> (as above). What's really happening is that they just call dvipdf. 
>> You can do this yourself from the command line.
>
> 	So according to this whenever I double click a dvi file in the Finder 
> and launch TeXShop as a result the command "dvipdf" is being invoked 
> to convert the file to pdf, right? If this is the case then I 
> shouldn't have any problem with any kind of LaTeX output, since from 
> what you write I take it that no problems should arise with ps files 
> either (something similar being done to them by TeXShop when 
> double-clicked), right?

The front ends are simply interfaces to tetex and  editors.

>
>> Have as many front ends are you like. The biggest issue is engines. 
>> They can conflict with one another.
>
> 	I assume that by engines you mean the command line binaries installed 
> by the Tex Live package, right? So as long as I keep that to a single 
> install I shouldn't have any problems regardless of the front ends I 
> have. I have the most common (or so I've seen so far) and latest 
> (according to the web page    http://www.rna.nl/tex.html) Gerben 
> Wierda's Tex Live distribution (thank you so much for this Mr. 
> Wierda!). Anything I should keep in mind when using those binaries and 
> multiple front ends (namely: TeXShop and Thomas Kiffe's tools) to keep 
> my system clean of problems?

Should be no problem at all. There are individual issues related to 
each front end, but they don't conflict with one another as far as I've 
ever heard. It's primarily the engines that can, and even for those, I 
think its "only" the multiple variants of tetex that you can install... 
Gerben Wierda's, fink's, and other builds out there that may exist. 
OzTeX is pretty well self-confined (unless you want it to use tetex as 
the engine!). CMacTeX, I believe is pretty much the same in that 
respect. Summary, install tetex (the unix TeX) once, and only once.

>
>> You're welcome. I'm sure you can answer questions for some of us in 
>> the future.
>> Joe
>
> 	I very much hope so. That wouldn't only mean that I'd be giving back, 
> but also that I've learned as much as to be able to help others. And 
> that is very cool as well!!

I bounce around between 2 front ends, and theirs editors, plus one 
other (none mentioned lest I start one of those vi/emacs wars ;) ). The 
beauty of using LaTeX on the Mac is the degree of diversity is sooo 
great. It's easily overwhelming. Some other things to look at: the two 
spell checkers, Excalibur and CocoAspell, and the bibliography tools, 
Bibdesk and tkbibtex. Browse the mac-tex site for lots of other neat 
stuff, and let me know if I've missed anything.

>
> 	All my best. Sincerely,...
>
>
> 		Juan.
>
>
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\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Joseph C. Slater
(+1) 937-775-5085
http://www.cs.wright.edu/~jslater


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Mac TeX info, resources, and news can be found at:
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