Welcome to MacTEX! Whats Next?

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? TEX for the World Document Processing vs. Word Processing TEX Front Ends on Mac OS X About the Learning Curve Control Sequences, Macros and Formats A LTEX Resources ConTEXt Resources Plain TEX Resources Other TEX Resources Fonts for TEXXTEX, ConTEXt and LuaTEX A Mac OS X TEX/LTEX Wiki & Mailing List TEXLive and MacTEX Current Version of Welcome Doc

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Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

TEX is a free, multilingual, open source typesetting system for the creation of beautiful booksand especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics, says TEX developer Donald Knuth. TEX runs on literally all modern computer systems, from personal computers to mainframes, andof courseon the Macintosh with Mac OS X. With few exceptions, documents created in TEX can be transported across operating systems and look the same, no matter where they are typeset. TEX is a programming language with 300 primitive typesetting commands called control sequences. Almost all users of TEX work with the macro formats that sit on top of TEX to make it easier to use. Professor Knuth, himself, developed the first format, calling it Plain TEX.
TeX Front Ends (Mac OS X) TeXShop TeXworks Others

TeX Macro Formats Plain E-Plain LaTeX ConTeXt

TeX Primitives

TeX Engine

TEX for the World

TEX supports languages worldwide. It publishes from left-to-right, right-to-left and top-tobottom. TEX languages include any with a writing system supported or supportable by fonts. This means you can publish in almost any language. Where fonts for publishing a language are unavailableor under developmentif you ask, someone will probably help. It happens all of the time. Supported languages include:
Arabic, Armenian, Bangla and Asamese, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Casyl, Cherokee, Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Coptic, Croatian, Czech and Slovene, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Dutch, English, Epi-Olmec, Ethiopian, French, German, Greek, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inuktitut, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Malayalam, Manju, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Slovene, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Document Processing vs. Word Processing

TEX is a document processing system, not a word processor. A word processorsuch as Pages or The TEX document processor typesets your conWordshows you the results as you entent and commands into a separate output ter and format your content. file, typically a PDF.

TeX Program

Word Processor +s and -s

One of the best advantages of word processors is being able to see the results as you enter text and pictures. For example, it is easy to insert images and wrap text around them. You can also change as you type such text attributes as bold, italic, font and size. On the downside, word processors gen! erally do a below average job of typog! raphy, that is controlling the overall ap! pearance of how words and images appear on a page. They have few, or di"cult to use, functions for #ne!tuning line breaks, justi#ed type, word spacing, hyphen! ation, line spacing and so on. While word processors are great for many uses, for the most part, printed materials created today with word processors are of lower typographic quality than those published in the 19th and the 20th centuries using pre!computer typesetting methods. Also making changes to a large word processor document format can be very di"cult and time consuming, even if you use the so!called $style sheets%. TeX and its o&spring such as eplain, LaTeX and ConTeXt can consistently produce high!quality typographic output.

Word Processor +s and -s

One of the best advantages of word processors is being able to see the results as you enter text and pictures. For example, it is easy to insert images and wrap text around them. You can also change as you type such text attributes as bold, italic, font and size. On the downside, word processors generally do a below average job of typography, that is controlling the overall appearance of how words and images appear on a page. They have few, or difcult to use, functions for ne-tuning line breaks, justied type, word spacing, hyphenation, line spacing and so on. While word processors are great for many uses, for the most part, printed materials created today with word processors are of lower typographic quality than those published in the 19th and the 20th centuries using pre-computer typesetting methods. Also making changes to a large word processor document format can be very difcult and time consuming, even if you use the so-called style sheets.
A TEX and its offspring such as eplain, LTEX and ConTEXt can consistently produce high-quality typographical output.

TEX Front Ends on Mac OS X

You can run TEX from the OS X terminal oras most MacTex users dothrough one of the front end programs. The TEX front ends look like text editors where you type content and control sequences. To see your output document, you typeset or compile by selecting a command. Mac OS X has several TEX front ends, including TEXShop, TEXworks and iTEXMac. TEXShop, iTEXMac are Macintoshspecific, while TEXworks is cross platform. New users typically start with TEXShop because of its regular updates, ease of use and widespread support. You can find more information on the front ends by visiting their websites: TEXShop: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/ TEXworks: http://www.tug.org/texworks/ iTEXMac: http://itexmac.sourceforge.net/

About the Learning Curve

For the things most people do, the effort needed to learn TEX is similar to that of learning a word processor with its style configurations. Learning and using TEX can be: simple or complex

depending on your needs. Because of its precise typographical capabilities, the quality of TEXs output far exceeds that of any word processor.

Control Sequences, Macros and Formats

TEX includes hundreds of built-in formatting commands, called control sequences, such as \sl for slanted and \bf for bold. To simplify marking up text, control sequences can be combined into macros, such as \heading for bold slanted, for example. Groups of macros can be collected into formats for generalized or specialized uses. Formats can set margins, number sections and paragraphs, build tables of contents and define colors, as examples. Three formats illustrating the diversity of TEX are:
A LTEX Originally designed mostly for technical publishing, inA cluding math equations, LTEX also supports many add-on packages for both special and general applications.

ConTEXt ConTEXt is aimed at general publishing. ConTEXt is very structured, allowing you to design a document and then add text, almost without regard to the document formatting.

Eplain Eplain TEX extends Plain TEX with indexes and tables of contents, for example. Eplain is style-neutral, without an underlying design influencing the structure of your documents.

All three, plus many more, are included with the MacTEX installer. You can also do-it-yourself, creating your own macros and formats, a common practice among experienced users.

A LTEX ResourcesOnline
A The most widely used TEX formatand a good place to start with TEXLTEX was originally developed by Leslie Lamport and later refined by thousands. Many packages provide extra functions. A Some helpful LTEX starting places online include: A The Not So Short Introduction to LTEX by Tobias Oetiker Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna and Elisabeth Schlegl. Summarizes basic concepts and control sequences in numerous languages. http://mirror.unl.edu/ctan/info/lshort/ A LTEX for Word Processor Users by Guido Gonzato. Cross references familiar word processor comA mands with the equivalent LTEX control sequences. http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/latex4wp/latex4wp.pdf A Online Tutorials for LTEX by India TUG. For beginners, these cover lists, boxes, tables, floats, colors, footnotes, margin notes, bibliographies, math, tables of contents, indices http://www.tug.org/tutorials/tugindia/ A Hypertext Help with LTEX by Dr. Sheldon Green. Reference information for experienced users. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/latex/

A LTEX ResourcesBooks
A There are many books on LTEX, including: A LTEX: A Document Preparation System by Leslie Lamport. Definitive book by the original develA oper of LTEX. ISBN: 0201529831. A Guide to LTEX (4th Edition) by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly. Attempts to cover all aspects A of LTEX, including most of the packages. ISBN: 0321173856. A LTEX Companion, The (2nd Edition) by Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens, Johannes Braams and David Carlisle. Provides guidance on basic formatting. Includes detailed help on packages for tabular and technical typesetting. ISBN: 0201362996. A The LTEX Web Companion: Integrating TeX, HTML, and XML by Michel Goossens, Sebastian Rahtz, A Eitan M. Gurari and Ross Moore. Discusses using TEX and LTEX with the web and XML. Not a beginners book, but some of the tools, such as TeX4ht, make TEX to HTML conversions easy. ISBN: 0201433117. A LTEX Graphics Companion by Michel Goossens, Sebastian Rahtz and Frank Mittelbach. Describes A techniques and tricks needed to illustrate LTEX documents. ISBN: 0201854694.

ConTEXt Resources
ConTEXt is another widely-used TEX format. It is very structured and modular, designed more A for general publishing than LTEX. ConTEXt can work from XML source files. The primary developer of ConTEXt is Hans Hagen. Good sources of information on ConTEXt are: PRAGMA Advanced Document Engineering website This website is the home of ConTEXt. Here you can find documentation on using ConTEXt, plus updates. http://www.pragma-ade.com/ ConTEXt Wiki This wiki include tutorials and tips by ConTEXt users. http://wiki.contextgarden.net/ Mailing list for ConTEXt users You can get your ConTEXt questions answered here. Hans Hagen participates on this list. http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context/

Plain TEX Resources

If you want to learn TEX from the ground up, Plain TEX is a technical place to start. Use it for a while, then modify and make your own macros. Resources include: A Gentle Introduction to TEX by Michael Doob. Starts from the beginning and moves toward more complex usage. No previous knowledge of TEX is assumed. http://ctan.tug.org/get/info/gentle/gentle.pdf TEX Reference Card by J.H. Silverman. Summarizes frequently used commands in Plain TEX. http://refcards.com/docs/silvermanj/tex/tex-refcard-letter.pdf http://refcards.com/docs/silvermanj/tex/tex-refcard-a4.pdf The TEXbook by Donald Knuth. Definitive book on TEX and Plain TEX by the developer of TEX. This is an excellent book if you want to understand TEX. Follow the instructions for multiplepass reading. ISBN: 0201134489 http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/books.html TEX for the Beginner by Wynter Snow. An older but very helpful book for learning Plain TEX, written in a accurate, understandable and sometimes whimsical style. ISBN: 0201547996

Other TEX Resources

TUG The TEX Users Group (TUG) is the local user group (LUG) for TEX users in North America and any area or language not supported by a local users group. It is run by its members and supported mostly through annual dues. http://www.tug.org/ Local Users Groups Because TEX has extraordinary support for languages, local users groups are available worldwide. http://tug.org/usergroups.html CTAN This is the Comprehensive TEX Archive Network, the authoritative collection of materials related to the TEX typesetting system. Here you can download information, programs and A packages about TEX, LTEX, ConTEXt and more. http://www.ctan.org/ The TEX Showcase The showcase contains examples of what you can do with TEX, macro packA ages such as LTEX and ConTEXt, plus related programs like METAPOST. http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

Fonts for TEXXTEX, ConTEXt and LuaTEX

Built-in Fonts
TEX comes with its own fonts, separate from the system fonts. Installing new TEX fonts is complicated and seldom done because of the availability of XTEXand LuaTEX, described below.

Fonts in ConTEXt
Using fonts in ConTEXt is fairly straight forward. You can download a fonts sampler from: http://pragma-ade.com/specials/fonts/fontspecial-s.pdf

XTEX
XTEX enables TEX and its variants to use Mac system fonts by merging Unicode and Mac OS X A font technologies into TEX. XLTEX typeset this document using the Gentium Book font. http://tug.org/xetex/

LuaTEX
LuaTEX offers native support for OpenType fonts. In contrast to XTEX, the fonts are not accessed through the operating system libraries, but through a library based on FontForge. http://www.luatex.org/

A Mac OS X TEX/LTEX Wiki & Mailing List

The TEX on Mac OS X wiki is a primary source for finding information about running TEX and its variations on a Macintosh. The wiki was started in July 2008 as a replacement to the original TEX on Mac OS X website created by Gary L. Gray and Joseph C. Slater as a service to the Macintosh TEX community. On this wiki you can find information and how-to instructions on TEX. It is located at: http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/ You can also subscribe to the Mac-TEX mailing list: http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/wiki/index.php/Mailing_lists

TEX Live and MacTEX

MacTEX is a complete installation of TEX Live, packaged for Mac OS X. In addition to TEX Live, MacTEX installs: Ghostscript Conversion functions of ImageMagick Latin Modern and TEX Gyre fonts in the OS X fonts folder A Several front end programs including TEXShop text editor for TEX, LTEXiT equation editor, BibDesk bibliography manager and Excalibur spell checker.

Install options allow you to bypass installation of some of these packages. The website for MacTEX is: http://www.tug.org/mactex/ The website for TEX Live is: http://www.tug.org/texlive/

Current Version of Welcome Doc

You can find the current version of this document at: http://www.tug.org/mactex/

This document was prepared by Bob Kerstetter, who is responsible for its content, including any omissions and errors. Send your comments to [email protected]. Version number: 2.0, 2010-08-02. Version 1.0 was unnumbered. Created 2005-10-26, lightly edited 2008-04-08