iLife and LaTex
Posted by Nick.
While I’m posting nerdy stuff, I’ve got some questions for people with experience using iLife and LaTex in OSX. I have tried to get LaTex to work on my machine, but I am convinced I am retarded and it refuses to cooperate. Forget where I got it from, but I guess the installation instructions etc were unclear.
As for iLife, do people have positive feelings? Thought it could be cool to build websites the lazy way (simple code is fine, but trying fancy things gets annoying with text). Just not sure if it’s worth the $40 if I’m just going to screw around with it, and not necessarily use it …
September 27th, 2006 at 4:16 pm Using
Relatively recently I have messed with trying to make LaTeX work on my powerbook, with significant success. “Past success is no guarantee of future gains and people can and do lose money” but even so that might be a good weekend-while-watching-football activity? It’s not easy but maybe having done it a couple times it’s not so hard, either.
I use TexShop but talking to Kara this weekend she said that Texmaker is better, so we can try that too, dunno.
September 27th, 2006 at 7:35 pm Using
I think i installed latex from fink commander. It’s all very hazy to me now. are TexShop and Texmaker some sort of word-like thing for tex? Because I’ve been writing all my tex in a plain old vi window.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm Using
hahaa nick cant get the Latex to work on his “machine” ahhhh. good times. ok carry on…..
September 27th, 2006 at 10:16 pm Using
yes, TexShop and Texmaker are gooey, erm, GUI versions. you wrote your papers in vi? yeeck. the fancy versions have all sorts of nice pulldown menus and options and self-reference-y things.
Qun says he’s gonna try Texmaker, so we’ll see. TexShop is solid but has room for improvement.
September 28th, 2006 at 12:01 am Using
well, i wrote how i was shown to write. back in undergrad, i used Scientific Word, which the profs required we use to write our lab reports in. but that was on my old win98 desktop, which i stopped using by the time i started writing research papers at dartmouth.
September 28th, 2006 at 12:28 pm Using
I’ve done it a couple of different ways and had success with both methods. You can either use fink to install latex and then use whatever text editor you like. (I generally like emacs) Or you can use the installers that come with TeXShop. There are a few tricks though… First, you can use TexShop to edit documents and then use the fink-installed latex to typeset them. Second, TexShop doesn’t install latex on its own, you have to follow the instructions and use the iInstaller program. Third, TexShop doesn’t like eps figures, so if you use it, you’re always going to be typing “latex file.tex” on the command line.
I’m not sure if iLife is worth it. I wanted to try doing some fancy-ish web stuff so I picked up a copy last spring. The conclusion is that iWeb does work and Garage Band would be cool if I was really into music. iPhoto is getting pretty good in recent versions too, although I’m not sure if I like it or Adobe Lightroom better. You should check out Nvu if you want a [supposedly] good html program.
September 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm Using
Yes, TexShop doesn’t like eps:(
I tried Texmaker, and though it might still be a little bit buggy (when I double clicked the tex file, it could bring up Texmaker but the file itself was not opened), it does support eps without any problem. I also like Texmaker’s quickbuild feature which is a sequence of commands and you can customize it to your need. But I’m having some trouble with the spell check. I installed the required aspell, but it just doesn’t work….