[OS X TeX] Fwd: LaTeX on Mac OS X

[Alan Munn]

At 12:58 AM +0100 9/23/07, Phil Trinh wrote:
>I'm relatively new to the Mac and perhaps even more new to Unix
>environments, so please, bear with me. I've already downloaded and
>installed MacTeX, and using TeXShop to write my documents is, for the
>most part, fine.
>
>However, I'd like to use a program like TeXmaker because of the GUI,
>but also because of the choice to output and view via DVI. This makes
>it so I don't have to convert eps files to pdf beforehand (something I
>have to do if I use TeXshop).

This isn't actually true.  The final output will be pdf, in that 
TeXShop preview is a pdf previewer and not a DVI previewer, but 
TeXShop can easily use the latex - divips - pstopdf route:  In the 
TeXShop preferences under "Typesetting" simply choose TeX + 
Ghostscript instead of pdftex.  Then you can include EPS files 
directly as you are used to.

Also, TeXShop has some palettes with often used LaTeX 
symbols/commands which may emulate some of the GUI of TeXMaker, 
although it's true that the philosophy of TeXShop is to minimize 
these kinds of things.  iTeXMac is another editor that takes a more 
"buttony" approach as well, and is also a good program.

>Unfortunately, texmaker has to be set up
>correctly with my TeX distribution.
>
>See the image here: http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/doc.html#SECTION02
>
>What commands should I be using and/or where should I be looking for
>them? That's the thing about Unix. I'm not sure where I should be
>looking for files/commands.

 From the user point of view, MacTeX installs all the executables in 
/usr/texbin, so in the preferences of TeXMaker, you should substitute 
whatever path is the default path with /usr/texbin

So for the latex command, your TeXMaker pref should be

  "/usr/texbin/latex" -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex

and similarly for the other tex related commands.

The ghostscript preference should remain /usr/local/bin/gs

It seems that TeXMaker assumes that you are using an external 
dvi/ps/pdf viewer.  On my system, this defaults to TeXShop, which is 
probably not what you want.  So for the preferences for dvi viewer 
etc. you will need to specify the application.

So instead of the preference being

open %.dvi

you would replace it with

open -a "<name of your viewer>" %.dvi (assuming that your viewer is 
in /Applications)

For example, to view pdf files with Adobe Reader, change the pdf 
viewer preference to

open -a "Adobe Reader" %.pdf


Hope this helps. (And beware the flood of "but you can do everything 
you want with TeXShop" posts that your request will spawn.)  There 
aren't many TeXMaker users here, I suspect, but that doesn't mean 
you're not welcome.

Alan



-- 
Alan Munn 
amunn at msu.edu
Department of Linguistics                             
and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages   Fax.  +1-517-432-2736
Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824       Tel.  +1-517-355-7491

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