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Installing TeX Live

If you downloaded MacTeX-2007 as recommended under the "Obtaining" tab, open the dmg file and double click MacTeX-2007 to begin the installation process.

Follow the same procedure if instead you obtained BasicTeX, gwTeX, or TeXLive-2007-Dev.

If you installed MacTeX-2007, you already have TeXShop, but it may be an older version. So I recommend that all users download TeXShop from the link under the "Obtaining" tab, and drag it to /Applications/TeX. Then drag its icon to the desktop, start the program, and read "First Steps with TeXShop," the first item in the TeXShop Help menu. This item will explain how to get started with TeXShop, and then how to use other items in the Help menu to learn TeX.

Some History

Users interacting with TeX using a front end program are sometimes unaware of the vast support machinery acting invisibly behind the scene. This machinery consists of Donald Knuth's command line program, which does the actual typesetting, and of an enormous number of fonts, macro packages like LaTeX and ConTeXt, style files, documentation, configuration files, and the like. The enormous collection of programs and support files is called a TeX Distribution.

For a number of years, the standard TeX distribution on Unix machines, Linux, and Mac OS X was teTeX, maintained by Thomas Esser. On the Macintosh, this distribution was enhanced by Gerben Wierda, who wrote a program called i-Installer to download his enhanced version from the network, to configure it, and to upgrade it periodically.

Several years ago the TeX Users Group introduced an even more extensive distribution called TeX Live, for Unix machines, Windows, and Mac OS X; the principal authors are Sebastian Rahtz, Karl Berry, and Staszek Wawrykiewicz. Gerben's distribution used TeX Live as the source of all programs, and used teTeX for style files, fonts, etc.

On May, 2006, Thomas Esser announced that he would no longer support teTeX, and suggested that users move to TeX Live. This caused a scramble throughout the TeX world; in particular Gerben Wierda has worked to move his i-Installer supported distribution to TeX Live. The new distribution is called gwTeX.

In November, 2006, Gerben Wierda announced this new version at the TUG conference in Marrakesh, but he simultaneously announced that he would end active support in January, 2007, although he will continue upgrading the system to meet his own needs.

As a consequence of this history, four different TeX Distributions are commonly used on Mac OS X. Esser's teTeX is still available via i-Installer, Fink, and MacPorts. Gerben Wierda's new gwTeX is widely used, as is TeX Live; the 2007 version of TeX Live was recently released. A smaller subset of TeX Live, BasicTeX, is also available. TeXShop works with all of these distributions.

Multiple Distribution Support

Gerben Wierda and Jerome Laurens recently designed a data structure to support multiple TeX distributions on a machine. This data structure is installed by the MacTeX packages and by i-Installer. The data structure is placed in /Library/TeX and consists of some carefully designed symbolic links to installed distributions. Using this structure, teTeX, gwTeX, TeX Live, and BasicTeX easily coexist on a machine.

After installation, a new Preference Pane can be found in Apple's System Preferences. The pane, called "TeX Distributions", lists installed TeX distributions; the active distribution is hilighted. Using the pane, a different distribution can be made active. When that happens, all GUI applications are reconfigured automatically, and PATH and MAN variables are reset for command line interaction with the new active distribution.

The data structure is ingenious; it does not modify TeX distributions in any way. Switching distributions actually modifies only a single symbolc link. A new link, /usr/texbin, is created which points to the binary directory of the active TeX distribution. GUI applications need to be reconfigured for the data structure, but after they are configured once, they will work without modification in the future. TeXShop, BibDesk, and LaTeXiT all use /usr/texbin automatically.

The data structure installed by i-Installer and MacTeX understands the older teTeX distribution. So if you were using teTeX in the past and you install TeX Live as described previously, your teTeX will remain completely unchanged, and will be listed along with TeX Live in the preference pane.

i-Installer; gwTeX

Until recently, users obtained TeX command line programs and support packages using Gerben Wierda's i-Installer. The Ghostscript, ImageMagick, and Font Utilities portions of MacTeX come directly from this program. i-Installer can be used to upgrade and maintain these packages.

To use the program, which can be found in /Applications/Utilities, run the program and ignore the initial panel warning that the software is not supported. Under the "i-Package" menu, select "Known Packages i-Directory." A panel will open listing various packages. For instance, one of these packages is "Ghostscript 8". Double click, and a new Ghostscript panel will open. Click on the "Install & Configure" button to upgrade Ghostscript. (Actually, Ghostscript, ImageMagick, and the Font Utilities have been stable recently with few upgrades, so this step is seldom needed.)

You may wish to install gwTeX instead of, or in addition to, TeX Live. To do so, use i-Installer as above and install the following four packages. Only the first is essential, but the remaining four are recommended.

i-Installer is a complicated program because it can do many things. For more detailed installation instructions, visit Gerben Wierda's TeX Home Page. See also Gerben's i-Installer Home Page

Advice

All of the various TeX distributions contain the same basic programs and files, and a new user is likely to find that it makes no difference which distribution is used. If you are new to TeX and have adequate download capability, I recommend obtaining MacTeX-2007 because installation is straightforward and you'll have all support files likely to be mentioned in any TeX book you consult.

Gerben does an excellent job choosing support packages, so using gwTeX instead of TeX Live is likely to be a completely satisfactory approach as well.

More experienced users tell me they prefer to install both gwTeX and TeX Live. Both are very modern and up to date distributions, and they complement each other nicely.

If your download speed is slow, use BasicTeX. It is remarkably complete, supporting TeX, LaTeX, AMSTeX, ConTeXt, XeTeX, and all commonly used packages.