[OS X TeX] Simple(?) MacTeX question

[Rowland McDonnell]

> On Sep 11, 2006, at 05:01, Rowland McDonnell wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've got MacTeX installed, and I'm trying to find out what exactly
> > I've got installed.
> >
> > I see I've got these things installed:
> >
> > ImageMagick
> > fontforge
> > libwmf
> > freetype
> >
> > Could some kind person explain briefly what these things are used
> > for with MacTeX?  I've tried to find some documentation which
> > explains, but I've drawn a blank.
> 
> ImageMagick is a very popular suite of command line tools to convert 
> graphic formats. On the command line there are manual pages for these 
> tools. "man ImageMagick" will give you a short overview. One of the 
> most often used commands is "convert". "man convert" will give you its 
> manual page. ImageMagick  has a web site: http://www.imagemagick.org. 

Yes indeed - lots of advertising telling you how wonderful the software
is and what one can do with it, but nothing at all to answer my question
`What is it used for with MacTeX', and a casual flip over the site
(again - I'd looked before) reveals a complete absence of anything I'd
call documentation.

> There also is a Wikipedia entry 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagemagick.

Yes, I'd found out about all that and read it before asking my questions
on this mailing list.

None of it goes any way to answering my question: what is ImageMagick
(etc) included with MacTeX for?

[man pages in particular are very unhelpful to someone who doesn't
already know how to use the software in detail - I've never been able to
get started with *ANYTHING* from a man page; man pages are only useful
as a reminder after you've learnt what you need somewhere else].

It's the same with all the additions I asked about: yes, I can find out
what they `do in a general sense' more or less easily in each case.  But
that is not what I asked about: i want to know what they do in the
context of MacTeX.

In short, how is MacTeX set up to use them, in what way are they doing
to intrude on my working habits, and is there any way in which I, as a
LaTeX user, can make any use of them at all?

Why, in short, has all this stuff been installed?

Now, I gather than ImageMagick is set up to provide on-the-fly
conversions from tiff to png when pdfLaTeXing.  I'd like to find out
more about this, mostly to stop it.  Where do I look?

btw, there are no man pages for `convert' or `ImageMagick' on my Mac
with MacTeX installed.

Rowland.

[snip other similar information]
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