Lightweight LaTeX installation for Mac OS X
Thursday, 23. April 2009, 12:41:44
You probably think the 1.2 GB package of the default MacTeX-Distribution is overkill. In my opinion, that is really a bit of a problem on mobile devices such as Macbooks, especially if you're using several operating systems. I show you a simple and effective way to install a basic MacTeX-Distribution on Mac OS X and how you can organize and add your individual necessary packages you need extra. I'm personally in a way a minimalist and don't use so many packages, maybe you too?
Overview of the software you are using:
That makes a total download size of, let me guess, unbelievable 60.6 MB! That's even a smaller file size than the popular MiKTeX-Installer from Windows with around 80 MB. If you're looking for an alternative to MiKTeX on OS X, this is the best solution.
Once you have installed the BasicTeX-Distribution you can easily add and update necessary packages with the TeX Live Utility. In fact, all this can be done with a command-line tool (tlmgr), but the TeX Live Utility is much easier if you don't know all the commands and it comes with a nice user-friendly GUI:
Overview of the software you are using:
-
BasicTeX-2008 (54.1 MB), a minimal MacTeX-Distribution
-
TeX Live Utility (1.4 MB), GUI-Program for managing and updating packages
- Your favorite text editor, e.g. I prefer Smultron (5.1 MB)
That makes a total download size of, let me guess, unbelievable 60.6 MB! That's even a smaller file size than the popular MiKTeX-Installer from Windows with around 80 MB. If you're looking for an alternative to MiKTeX on OS X, this is the best solution.
Once you have installed the BasicTeX-Distribution you can easily add and update necessary packages with the TeX Live Utility. In fact, all this can be done with a command-line tool (tlmgr), but the TeX Live Utility is much easier if you don't know all the commands and it comes with a nice user-friendly GUI:
Short introduction for creating and working with LaTeX documents on OSX
Additionally to this I demonstrate you an example how you can create a document with "pdflatex", this is a pretty fast way to publish documents on all computers. I suggest you know the basics with using command-line tools in the Terminal. If you're using TeXShop or similar software, you should use them instead of the much more complicated work flow here.
This could be interesting for LaTeX newcomers too, for a quick look into the stuff that matters
- First you have to create a TeX-File in your text editor. I took an example from Wikipedia:
\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \title{\LaTeX} \date{} \begin{document} \maketitle \LaTeX{} is a document preparation system for the \TeX{} typesetting program. It offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout, bibliographies, and much more. \LaTeX{} was originally written in 1984 by Leslie Lamport and has become the dominant method for using \TeX; few people write in plain \TeX{} anymore. The current version is \LaTeXe. % This is a comment, it is not shown in the final output. % The following shows a little of the typesetting power of LaTeX \begin{align} E &= mc^2 \\ m &= \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}} \end{align} \end{document}
I prepared also a file for download here. Save this file to a specific folder e.g. named "test" on your desktop. I suggest you use folders for TeX-Files because the program will output additional files. In your text editor you should see the syntax highlighting, which also helps a lot.
- Open up your Terminal.app; you can see on the second line your computer (mine here is called: den) and user name (ocho), please compare with the picture. Now you change the working directory ("~" means this is your user home directory) to the path where you put your example.tex file with "cd ~/Desktop/test/"
- After you changed the directory, you can check if the file is really there with the "ls" command.
- On the next line we compile the *.tex file with the program "pdflatex" and enter "pdflatex example.tex" - you can see the progress.
- Open up example.pdf with "open example.pdf" - now you have your document ready for printing and sharing. For more information about LaTeX use Google & Co. Have fun
example.texexample.pdf
WIDGETIZE
How to use Quote function: