Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

[D. D. Brierton]

Apologies for cross-posting to comp.text.tex and the Emacs groups. Please
prune/set follow-ups accordingly.

A friend of mine has decided at a very late stage of writing up her PhD
thesis to switch from MS Word to LaTeX. She's a Mac user, using the latest
OSX. As I wrote my thesis in LaTeX using Emacs/AucTeX I've offered to help
her out. The trouble is that she's a Mac user who knows next to nothing about
Unix, and I'm a Unix (specifically Linux) user who knows next to nothing
about Macs. As this is quite late in the day for her to be doing this
(although it is almost certainly necessary) I was wondering if someone out
there might be able to point me in the direction of some how-tos, or even hold
my (our) hand through this.

First questions: is it best (or necessary) to install the X server Apple
recently released, or are there native Aqua builds of Emacs and whatever DVI
viewers she might need (I guess that if she just uses pdflatex then she can
just use Aqua's native PDF rendering for previewing?)?

Next question: are there nice prebuilt binary packages which we can download
and install, or do we need to build from source, and if so, does the
bog-standard OSX install contain all the necessary developer tools?

Last (for now): how similar are the standard install paths on OSX to Linux?
Can I just make install auctex into /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp? And do
whatever LaTeX macros she needs go into ~/texmf?

If there is a better place to post ask this kind of thing (e.g. an Aqua/OSX
for Linux users newsgroup) then please let me know.

TIA, Darren

-- 
======================================================================
D. D. Brierton            darren@dzr-web.com           www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
======================================================================

Re: Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

[Charles Bouldin]

In article <Sv83a.2489$Vx2.229336@wards>,
 "D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> wrote:

> Apologies for cross-posting to comp.text.tex and the Emacs groups. Please
> prune/set follow-ups accordingly.
> 
> A friend of mine has decided at a very late stage of writing up her PhD
> thesis to switch from MS Word to LaTeX. She's a Mac user, using the latest
> OSX. As I wrote my thesis in LaTeX using Emacs/AucTeX I've offered to help
> her out. The trouble is that she's a Mac user who knows next to nothing about
> Unix, and I'm a Unix (specifically Linux) user who knows next to nothing
> about Macs. As this is quite late in the day for her to be doing this
> (although it is almost certainly necessary) I was wondering if someone out
> there might be able to point me in the direction of some how-tos, or even hold
> my (our) hand through this.
> 
> First questions: is it best (or necessary) to install the X server Apple
> recently released, or are there native Aqua builds of Emacs and whatever DVI
> viewers she might need (I guess that if she just uses pdflatex then she can
> just use Aqua's native PDF rendering for previewing?)?
> 
> Next question: are there nice prebuilt binary packages which we can download
> and install, or do we need to build from source, and if so, does the
> bog-standard OSX install contain all the necessary developer tools?
> 
> Last (for now): how similar are the standard install paths on OSX to Linux?
> Can I just make install auctex into /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp? And do
> whatever LaTeX macros she needs go into ~/texmf?
> 
> If there is a better place to post ask this kind of thing (e.g. an Aqua/OSX
> for Linux users newsgroup) then please let me know.
> 
> TIA, Darren

The best thing to do for a Mac user who wants to get into LaTeX is to go 
to versiontracker.com and get TeXShop. You'll also need to get the teTeX 
package for OSX. Both of these are very easy to install and use. TeXShop 
has an integrated editor and this should be just fine for getting 
started. You can then transition to BBEdit, Alpha or, eventually 
Emacs/auctex.....but my expectation would be that someone used to a Mac 
would not immediately take a liking to Emacs/Auctex.

To use TeXShop you don't need X11. Give TeXShop a try...you'll be up and 
running about 10 minutes after the downloads are done.


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Re: Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

[Pete Oster]

In article <Sv83a.2489$Vx2.229336@wards>, D. D. Brierton wrote:
> First questions: is it best (or necessary) to install the X server Apple
> recently released, or are there native Aqua builds of Emacs 

There's a nice native (carbon) build of fsf emacs 21.3.  I'm using it
to compose this followup.  See

  http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/

There are prebuilt binaries of this around but I wouldn't recommend
using them.  Unless you want mine, which I'm happy to upload...



Installing Apple's X11 server and either xemacs 21.4 or an X11 fsf
emacs 21.2 is also a perfectly good option.  See:

   http://fink.sourceforge.net/

Fink is Debian-style package manager with osx/darwin ports of many
popular gnu packages.  Most, including xemacs 21.4, are available
prebuilt for osx 10.2


As for TeX, I've never used it.  But fink includes a number of what
seem to be LaTeX and TeTex-related packages.



> Next question: are there nice prebuilt binary packages which we can download
> and install, or do we need to build from source, and if so, does the
> bog-standard OSX install contain all the necessary developer tools?

See above.  If you use fink, you can probably download prebuilt
binaries.  


If you need to compile your own, you'll have to install Apple's
'Developer Tools'.  You'll also need this if you decide to build the
carbon emacs 21.3. The standard osx commercial package includes a Dev
Tools cd.  If you don't have that, you can download a Dev Tools disk
image for free from Apple.  But don't do it on a dialup connection...



> Last (for now): how similar are the standard install paths on OSX to Linux?
> Can I just make install auctex into /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp? And do
> whatever LaTeX macros she needs go into ~/texmf?

The fink system wants to stay out of Apple's way, so it installs
everything in /sw.  If you use fink, add /sw/bin and /sw/sbin to PATH.
If you want to build your own packages without fink, /usr/local is a
perfectly reasonable target.

I don't know LaTex at all but if you use fink's I'm sure it will
behave just as it does in any other unix.  If that means ~/texmf, the
same will apply in osx.




> If there is a better place to post ask this kind of thing (e.g. an Aqua/OSX
> for Linux users newsgroup) then please let me know.

Possibly comp.sys.mac.system.

Re: Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

[Peter Ilberg]

"D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:
> First questions: is it best (or necessary) to install the X server Apple
> recently released, or are there native Aqua builds of Emacs and whatever DVI
> viewers she might need (I guess that if she just uses pdflatex then she can
> just use Aqua's native PDF rendering for previewing?)?
> 
> Next question: are there nice prebuilt binary packages which we can download
> and install, or do we need to build from source, and if so, does the
> bog-standard OSX install contain all the necessary developer tools?
> 
> Last (for now): how similar are the standard install paths on OSX to Linux?
> Can I just make install auctex into /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp? And do
> whatever LaTeX macros she needs go into ~/texmf?

As somebody else has already pointed out, TeXShop is a very
nice interface to tetex on Mac OS X and I'd suggest you look
at that first. There are links to the tetex distribution for
Mac OS X on that site.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html

Another place to look would be iTexMac, but I haven't used
it myself:

http://itexmac.sourceforge.net/

All of these IIRC are binary distribution and very easy to
install/get working.

If you really want to use emacs (but not the command-line-
only version that comes with Mac OS X) you can look at this
site for more information:

http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/

You'll need the developer tools for this one though. Usually
there's an installer in /Applications/Installers or
somewhere similar.

Peter

-- Peter Ilberg <peter.ilberg@ni.com>

Re: Setting up Emacs, AucTeX and (La)TeX on Mac OSX

[Norman Gray]

Greetings,

"D. D. Brierton" <darren@dzr-web.com> writes:

>First questions: is it best (or necessary) to install the X server Apple
>recently released, or are there native Aqua builds of Emacs and whatever DVI
>viewers she might need (I guess that if she just uses pdflatex then she can
>just use Aqua's native PDF rendering for previewing?)?

I wouldn't bother installing Apple's X server at this stage -- you
really don't need it.

I use Gerben Wierda's teTeX distribution, which is an OS X distribution
of the standard TeX distribution.  I use it in a unixy way, but very
many folk swear by Richard Koch's TeXShop, which is a nice front end
for it.  Both, and much more, are pointed to by
<http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/>.  That site also points to the
MacOSX-TeX mailing list, which is reasonable-volume, and useful.

On the Mac I use pdf(la)tex exclusively.  OS X's Preview application
works OK, really, but has occasionally wimped out on me, so I use
Acrobat Reader to view PDFs.

I use porkrind emacs, at <http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/>, which is a
build of Andrew Choi's current snapshot of Emacs 21.3
<http://mac-emacs.sourceforge.net>.  Yes, you could lift the source and
build it yourself, but I've built emacs enough times that the novelty
has worn off, and I really can't see the need to bother.

Folk seem to both swear by and swear at Fink.  I've managed perfectly
well so far, without having to form an opinion, so if I were you I'd
avoid it at present, and so avoid multiplying your worries
unnecessarily.

>Next question: are there nice prebuilt binary packages which we can download
>and install, or do we need to build from source, and if so, does the
>bog-standard OSX install contain all the necessary developer tools?

If you do need to build stuff, then you'll need to install the
developer tools.  They're not installed by default, but can be found on
the grey CD which came with the OS X CDs.

Good luck,

Norman

-- 
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Norman Gray                        http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/