[OS X TeX] TexShop w/ minimal LaTeX installation for dummies?

[Ralph Pöllath]

Hi,

On 07.05.2004, at 02:54, Will Robertson wrote:
> Ralph Pöllath wrote:
>
>> Would it be possible to produce a version of TexShop containing a 
>> minimal LaTeX installation in its application bundle?
>
> Another program that I heard about recently actually does this just 
> for (I believe) ConTeXt's PDF tools. I'm at work, so I can't remember 
> exactly which program that was, though...

Interesting. I know that I for one would be interested in that.

>> That would make it extremely easy for first-time LaTeX users (coming 
>> from MS Word, e.g.) to get an impression of what LaTeX feels like. Of 
>> course, this would be suited for exploration only - those who would 
>> like to continue using LaTeX shoud use i-Installer to install the 
>> real thing (think Knoppix).
>
> One of the problems is deciding exactly what gets included and who 
> maintains it. Personally, I'd include only pdflatex and keep only the 
> most used packages, but I haven't looked into the situation enough to 
> know how much that would bloat TeXShop by.

I'd indclude the bare basics only, and provide a couple of real-world 
sample documents.

> You certainly don't want TeXShop to increase in size five-fold just to 
> help out new users. I think with the progress Gerben's made recently 
> with i-Installer, it's simple enough to install TeX anyway.

No, I wouldn't want this included in the standard TeXShop distribution, 
I thought of a separate download. Drag the application bundle to your 
hard drive, double click it and play around with LaTeX. Then drag it to 
the trash, and if you liked it, check out i-Installer.

Cheers,
-Ralph.

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