Using TeX for Mac OS X

For over 20 years, TeX (pronounced 'tek') and LaTeX (pronounced 'lay-tek') have been the de facto text processing systems used in academia and research. One of the main advantages is the ability to typeset beautiful mathematical formulas, no matter how complicated. In the two decades since TeX was created, no other word processor or text editor for any computer platform has been able to match the quality of typesetting that TeX provides. Almost every mathematics textbook at the university level published today is typeset in some variant of TeX.

TeX (and its variants) is available for nearly every computer platform, including Microsoft Windows. However, TeX is best used on any variant of the Unix operating system, including Linux and (now) Mac OS X. More importantly, TeX is absolutely free, although some distributions may charge a nominal fee.

The simplest way to obtain the complete TeX system is to download the free MacTeX Package. This package uses Gerben Wierda's free TeXLive-teTeX distribution, which uses TeX Live (the central TeX development system for Unix) and teTeX (another very popular Unix-only distribution seen in many Linux systems). MacTeX fully supports Intel-based Macs; all programs in the MacTeX package either are Universal binaries or include both PowerPC and Intel binaries.

Similar to compiling computer programs by creating program files, the creation of a TeX file involves three stages: the editing of the file (which is just a text file), the typesetting command (which invokes the typesetting engine to convert the TeX file into a device independent file or PDF), and the viewing of the final result (either by printing or opening a frontend viewing program). The picture above shows a LaTeX file opened with vim (a standard Unix text editor) and TeXShop, an excellent frontend viewing program available for Mac OS X (which has won an Apple Design Award!).

Using TeXShop and vim together is easy. Open your TeX file using vim. To compile your file the first time, you can do so directly from vim with the command :!open % in escape mode. Mac OS X will open TeXShop automatically. Make sure in your TeXShop Preferences you have set "Configure for External Editor" under the Document tab.

Recommended Reading

  • Guide to LaTeX, Fourth Edition; Kopka and Daly (Addison-Wesley, 2004). An excellent book for users who are new to LaTeX but also helpful as a reference guide to less experienced users.
  • The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition; Mittelbach and Goosens (Addison-Wesley, 2004). The definitive reference book for experienced users of LaTeX. If you have a copy of the book, you should download the errata file, which is also available in all current distributions of LaTeX.

Illustrated: A screenshot of TeXShop and Terminal. The text is gratuitously stolen from Proofs from The Book, Aigner and Ziegler, Springer, 1998.

For Users Familiar with TeX and LaTeX:

The current installation of TeX on all Macs with the TeXLive-teTeX package contains the following familiar Unix apps.
  • tex, latex, bibtex, etc.
    The standard tools for creating Device Independent (dvi) files, which can be viewed with a dvi viewer, or converted into PostScript for printing.
  • pdftex, pdflatex
    These two programs forego the creation of dvi files; tex files are directly converted into PDF, which can be viewed or printed using any PDF viewer.
    A problem with pdftex and pdflatex is that these programs will not import graphics files in Encapsulated PostScript (*.eps), instead you can convert the file to PDF using epstopdf and use the graphicx package.
  • gs
    Ghostscript 8, which provides the engine that converts dvi files into PostScript. PostScript files now can be converted to PDF using Preview for Mac OS X.
  • pdf2ps, ps2pdf, dvips, epstopdf etc.
    Conversion tools for various file formats.

New to TeX?

Here are some links that will help you get started.