Hanne's blog

First you need to get the LaTeX package. It is called MacTeX, is based on texlive and can be found here: http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are other LaTeX distributions for Mac, and some editors and stuff if you want it. See here:
http://mactex-wiki.tug.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

But I didn't want that. I downloaded the MacTex package and installed it the usual Mac way.

The binaries goes in /usr/texbin/. To get it into your path after installation you need to start a new terminal window (or just a new shell I guess).

It contains latex, pdflatex, bibtex etc. just like on Linux, and it compiles my LaTeX documents and seems to have all the LaTeX packages I use.

The only thing missing was the convenience of running Acrobat Reader with the command acroread mydoc.pdf (which is probably only convenient because I am very used to it...)
So I made this advanced script:

#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Adobe\\ Reader\\ 9/Adobe\\ Reader.app/Contents/MacOS/AdobeReader $1 &

and called it "acroread" and put it in my path, and now I can run my LaTeX stuff just like I was on Linux.

(I always use pdflatex these days. I haven't checked for a dvi viewer or anything.)

Perhaps I should ask myself this question: Is making the Mac behave like my Linux box really learning to use Mac? In a way it is not. I do not use the Macbook the "Mac Way". I probably haven't figured out half of the convenient things the Mac can do of its own right. I might someday.

But my using Linux is probably not very much the Linux way either. It is the convenience way. I want my laptop/workstation OS to behave in ways that are convenient to me, and then in principle it could be any OS.

Then off course there are other issues, like compatibility with servers and
evelopment machines, like security, like license issues...

Update: I cannot get acrobat reader to print i colors... And not in duplex either. So I print from Linux...