OS X Additions
March 2nd, 2005I’ve been customizing my Apple a lot lately, trying to take advantage of OS X and the fact that it has a Unix kernel. My original goal was simply to be able to process LaTeX files on my machine, and after a quick search I realized I could either go with a light-weight Mac based program or a setup that is powered by teTeX, a complete distribution of the TeX processing system.
I decided to bust out the big guns and go with teTeX. Coming from a Unix background, I was hoping to run utilities (text editors, etc.) that were as “Unix-like” as possible. After hours of searching for the slickest, most efficient solution, I settled on the following set-up:
- fink — if you enjoy Open Source software, get fink. fink is a software project that ports many Open Source packages to Mac OS X; essentially, that means they take Open Source programs and modify it so that it compiles and runs on OS X — even X11 programs. Since I wanted teTeX, I needed fink. The best part of the way fink works is that the ported programs fit seamlessly into the operating system. For example, with teTeX installed (see below), I can just type “latex myfile.tex” from a Terminal window…and it works!
- teTeX — install this once you have fink set up. It includes TeX, LaTeX, and a variety of conversion utilities (dvips, ps2pdf, etc.)
- Enhanced Carbon Emacs — an old friend! No system is complete without emacs, and this version for OS X is even better since it comes in with a very easy-to-use LaTeX editing environment (that depends on teTeX). Also, Enhanced Carbon Emacs doesn’t require X11 — thus no need for fink — so if you’re craving emacs on your Mac, just download and use immediately! If you use emacs, get it from here now.
These programs have worked great so far. This adventure has also made me eager to find more useful and cool additions to my Mac, so once I find more I’ll post.