TEX options for math majors Michael A. Dickerson | 27 Aug 2004 This document is available in PDF and HTML from http://www.dci.pomona.edu/docs.

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A major advantage of a free software package like TEX is that there are many implementations and adaptations available which are suited to different computers and working styles. There is no one “true” TEX, nor is there a single authoritative source that can answer all of your TEX questions. Unfortunately, this federalization is sometimes confusing to beginners, and installing TEX can be non-trivial. We offer several options that may help you to avoid these details and focus on your work. The ones that I would recommend, because I am best able to support them and find them to cause fewer problems, are marked with the * symbol.

Note that if you are reading this document in print form, you might find it easier to open it online at http://www.dci.pomona.edu/docs/tex.html, so that you can click the links instead of typing them in.

For Linux and Unix

Since TEX was originally developed and released for Unix, there are several good free distributions, which all look very much the same except for the installation procedure and package managers. TEX is generally easiest to get along with on Unix.

*teTEX

Thomas Esser’s teTEX is one of the more complete and modern TEX distributions. It has been packaged for most Linux distributions and FreeBSD, and can also be found at CTAN. teTEX also includes the pdfTEX tools.

*TEX Live,

available on all the college-operated Unix servers, such as linus and outlier. You can log in to any of these servers through ssh, and if you have an X server you can run the graphical previewers and so on.

Keeping your TEX on the server gives you the best flexibility in that you can work uninterrupted from any computer with a ssh client, and the lowest probability of developing weird mutant problems that are hard to figure out. For more information, see Mike Dickerson or follow the instructions here: http://www.dci.pomona.edu/docs/tex-dci.html.

For Macintosh OS X

Apple Macintosh users now have the ability to use the Unix TEX distributions, described below, because of the Unix core of OS X. All of the OS X TEX programs that I have seen rely on one of these packages to do their back end work.

*TEXshop,

a native OS X front end that provides a convenient integrated editor and viewer for teTEX. TEXshop is freely available; you can download it at this URL: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html

iTEXMac,

another OS X front end for teTEX. iTEXMac has some promising features such as the ability to use an editor program of your choosing, but is less mature and probably has more bugs than TEXshop. It is freely available and can be downloaded from http://itexmac.sourceforge.net/.

For Microsoft Windows

PC-TEX,

a Windows program to assist with writing and previewing LATEX documents. Its style will be familiar to programmers; TEX source code is edited in one window and the results can be processed and previewed in another. PC-TEX is a commercial product that is available in the Andrew computer labs and classrooms; prices for your own system start at $99. More information is at http://www.pctex.com.

Scientific Word

is another Windows program to help TEX writers. Unlike PC-TEX it operates in WYSIWYG mode, meaning that it attempts to display documents in their printed form as you edit them. Thus it is more the style of a word processor like Microsoft Word, and may be easier for some people. Scientific Word is also a commercial product and is available in the Andrew computer labs and classrooms. The student price is $170 at http://www.mackichan.com.

*MiKTEX,

a complete TEX distribution for Windows that includes a DVI viewer, pdfTEX, and tools to help you process images to be included in TEX files. MiKTEX is freely available for you to install on your own computer. It can be downloaded from http://www.miktex.org.

If you use MiKTEX you will need an editor to go with it; two popular choices are WinEdt (commercial, $30 for students) or TEXnicCenter (free). TEXnicCenter can be downloaded from http://www.texniccenter.org/.