[OS X TeX] Differing PDF output on similarly configured Macs

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jun 11, 2011, at 11:25 PM, Christopher Menzel wrote:

> On Jun 11, 2011, at 7:39 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:
>> On Jun 11, 2011, at 12:09 AM, Christopher Menzel wrote:
>>> Greetings OS X TeX folk,
>>> 
>>> I am having trouble figuring out why I'm getting funky PDF output on my Macbook air when I use a custom package (jp.sty) together with pgfpages (*not* pdfpages). 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> Is there any way you could create a minimal but compilable sample file that we could test?
> 
> Sure thing.  Attached is a three page LaTeX file that compiles nicely to three PDF pages — 2 document pages per PDF page — on my iMac and Linux boxes but which, on my Mac Air, compiles to the mess that can be seen at http://cmenzel.org/pgfpagestest-MacAir.pdf.  (The correctly rendered PDF file that is generated by the attached LaTeX file on my iMac can be found at http://cmenzel.org/pgfpagestest-iMac.pdf.)  I've once again attached the custom jp.sty file that works in concert with pgfpages to get the 2-up PDF output (when things work as they're supposed to).
> 
> Thanks for your willingness to have a look.
> 
> Chris Menzel

Howdy,

Stop using the pdfsync package! It has been deprecated and is known to change page layout. There are several Editor/Previewer combinations (I use TeXshop but there are others on this list that use TeXworks or some other plain text editors (e.g., BBEdit, TextMate, Emacs, Vim) with TeXShop or Skim as the pdf Viewer. These will be able to use synctex, which is built into typesetting engines in recent TeX Distributions, to do Source<->PDF synchronization.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)