[OS X TeX] TeX on Snow Leopard

[Herbert Schulz]

On Aug 29, 2009, at 9:34 AM, Alain Schremmer wrote:

>
> On Aug 29, 2009, at 9:37 AM, Gary L. Gray wrote:
>
>> I installed Snow Leopard yesterday
>
> Given that my "policy" is to remain one system behind---er, right  
> now, I am running TeXShop 2.18-svn (2.18) with gwtex under 10.4.11--- 
> I am facing an extremely delicate question: does the Snow count as a  
> new system and should I thus move to 10.5.7 and MacTeX-2008?
>
> Or is it conceivable that I should wait until MacTeX-2009 is  
> finished testing and get it over with then? Makes me shudder, but  
> just about any excuse for putting off any updating of anything would  
> be quite welcome---and then there is always the chance that I will  
> drop dead before the fateful day.
>
> Hopeful regards
> --schremmer


Howdy,

Hmmm... depends on how you count. I seem to remember that you're using  
a G5 system so OS X 10.5.8 (maybe some more updates will be coming?)  
will be as far as you can go; OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is Intel only.  
On the other hand you should update since future software may be for  
10.5+ only. Best advice on updating is to always make a bootable  
backup of my complete system in case there are problems; I use the  
shareware SuperDuper! (it's worth the ~$28 to get the update features)  
but Carbon Copy Cloner (contribution requested) can be used too. A  
nice big external hard drive is fairly cheap and it can be partitioned  
so you can keep a permanent 10.4.11 backup and use a different  
partition for new updates.

As far as MacTeX is concerned... you can install MacTeX-2008 and then  
MacTeX-2009 when it comes out; you can easily get back the ~1GB for  
MacTeX-2008 once you are comfortable with 2009. Both can live happily  
together using the TeX Distribution System Preference Pane to choose  
the active distribution.

You should also update to the latest TeXShop (presently 2.26 but a new  
version will come out with MacTeX-2009).

Hope this helps.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest.com)