Mac Installation

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< Installation | TeX Distributions >

Welcome to the Macintosh! Nowadays it's not a big difference how to use TeX on MacOS or any other Unix.

MacTeX

The straightforward way to to install ConTeXt on MacOSX at the moment is via the [MacTeX] distribution. The distribution includes [TeXShop], and many many other goodies.

gwTeX / i-Installer

Before MacTeX, the best way to use ConTeXt on Mac has been gwTeX via Gerben Wierda's i-Installer so far.

  • download i-Installer and check the "known packages"
  • install the TeXlive tree
  • install the ConTeXt beta

However, it's not supported any more since January 2007, which means that you cannot post bug reports or feature requests to the author any more, but ConTeXt updates are still available and it works as expected.

If you have an ancient installation, you should replace the teTeX-based variant with TeXLive-based one:

  • uninstall both "gwTeX Support: ConTeXt updater" (context-update.ii2) and "DEPRECATED gwTeX based on teTeX" (tex.ii2)
  • install "gwTeX based on TeXLive" (texlive.ii2) and "ConTeXt updater" again

Minimal ConTeXt

There's a minimal TeX/ConTeXt distribution available from [Minimals] without the unneccessary stuff (LaTeX etc.) from TeXlive.

For a Mac tutorial on minimal ConTeXt installation see the mac section under ConTeXt_Minimals

TeXshop

Typically, It works out of the box, also on Intel-based Mac. Nevertheless, it has been reported that you may need to configure the TeX engine after installation as reported below:

"I went to preferences→engine and in the top box, filled in what it said in the brackets (i.e. /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current not /usr/texbin as was shown for some reason as the default). Note also that I did this on a powerbook G4 on Feb 11, 2007."

Also, if you plan to use XeTeX, take a look at the XeTeX page for some hints related to TeXshop.

More Links

  • MacTeX Home Page (MacTeX at TUG)
  • Mac OS X TeX/LaTeX Web Site (Penn State University)
  • TeXshop, a simple, elegant TeX editor and PDF viewer.
  • iTeXMac, a more fully featured, but sometimes more complex, TeX editor and PDF viewer
  • TeXniscope is an interesting, auto-updating PDF- and DVI viewer, especially helpful when you're updating documents from the command line or otherwise outside of the above-mentioned integrated editor/viewers.
  • There are more Text Editors that support ConText.
  • PDFView is a lightweight Mac OS X application to display PDF files with auto-update and PDFSync function.
  • How-to articles about Mac OS, for example how to uninstall applications on mac. Opportunity to submit questions.