LaTeX for Mac

ToadVine

Lads and lassies ... anyone know where I can download LaTeX for Mac OSX? I would appreciate the very, very simple answer, you know, the one where I click the download link and LaTeX downloads to my Mac

Another question ... my PhD is in the social sciences and does not involve a lot of formulae etc. I'm currently using Word and I rely heavily on EndNote. Should I even be thinking of using LaTeX??

Thanks in advance ...

5uspect

Click here:
http://www.tug.org/mactex/2011/
Download MacTeX.mpkg.zip. Simples.

TexShop, included above, is a lovely simple editor.
You can use Bibdesk, also included above, as a reference manager.
You can drag and drop bibtex entries from most journal websites directly into it.
When it comes to writing a thesis or papers LaTeX is the best way to go.
Word is a nightmare when preparing long detailed documents. With LaTeX you include a class file (often provided by the Journal or College) in your preamble, write your paper, hit compile and it's pretty much done all the formatting for you.

opinion guy

Dear God why ?

Word works fine - just don't use endnote - it sucks.
I've found native reference management in Word to be superior.

alternitavley for reference management there are options - including free programs such as zotero and Mendeley.

Why bother learning a whole new syntax/language as in LaTex

5uspect

Because LaTeX creates beautiful elegant documents, Word does not.
When it come to writing a PhD thesis LaTeX is far superior for managing style consistently throughout. It's faster in the long term to learn some basic TeX at the beginning and then not worry about formatting at the end when you've a thousand other things to worry about.
When writing papers the Journal will typically give you a LaTeX class file so you have little or no work in creating a compliant document for the typesetters.

Tree

There is a LaTeX forum if you have any specific questions. Everyone's lovely and helpful over there:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1286

OpinionGuy, i dunno, having learned to use LaTeX I wouldnt dream of using MS word to write a paper, it's just manky andyou have to worry about the layout of the doc far more than you do in LaTeX. Also, mendeley (which I adore) outputs .bibtex files so you can use that for (awesome) reference management as well as use it's output files for referencing.

avalon68

5uspect wrote: »

Because LaTeX creates beautiful elegant documents, Word does not.
When it come to writing a PhD thesis LaTeX is far superior for managing style consistently throughout. It's faster in the long term to learn some basic TeX at the beginning and then not worry about formatting at the end when you've a thousand other things to worry about.
When writing papers the Journal will typically give you a LaTeX class file so you have little or no work in creating a compliant document for the typesetters.

I've written my thesis and many papers with word - never had any issues. You just have to put a little time into setting your document preferences/ templates. Plus it makes it a lot easier when collaborating as not everyone can use latex. I would think that field with lots of equations like math/physics might struggle with word, but for most people it's more than adequate.

opinion guy

I've also never seen a journal that doesn't take word files.

Ostrom

opinion guy wrote: »

Dear God why ?

Word works fine - just don't use endnote - it sucks.
I've found native reference management in Word to be superior.

alternitavley for reference management there are options - including free programs such as zotero and Mendeley.

Why bother learning a whole new syntax/language as in LaTex

I've written my theses on word without any issues - can't stand latex. I usually have a few formulae which the newer versions of word handle just fine. Much easier to communicate with also.

5uspect

avalon68 wrote: »

I've written my thesis and many papers with word - never had any issues. You just have to put a little time into setting your document preferences/ templates. Plus it makes it a lot easier when collaborating as not everyone can use latex. I would think that field with lots of equations like math/physics might struggle with word, but for most people it's more than adequate.

For most people who just want a basic typewriter program Word is probably okay, if you're willing to pay. For academia I would disagree.

Personally since Office 2003 Word drives me absolutely insane. Whatever idiot decided to put that huge, unmovable, ribbon across the top of our wide aspect ratio (even 4:3) screens leaving a narrow letter box for working on portrait documents should be... sent to UI design 101. Adobe's excellent interfaces, like Photoshop, use a similar idea to presenting a lot of information on screen with pallets to one side that you have significant control over.

opinion guy wrote: »

I've also never seen a journal that doesn't take word files.

I never said Journals don't accept Word .doc (or is it .docx? :pac:) files. I said they provide LaTeX class files because what it's what most typesetters ultimately use to typeset the actual paper. Most Journals I publish in prefer LateX, but will accept Word.

efla wrote: »

I've written my theses on word without any issues - can't stand latex. I usually have a few formulae which the newer versions of word handle just fine. Much easier to communicate with also.

Sure, if all parties are using Windows or OS X (though I've found fonts don't always transfer well between Mac and Windows versions) and have newer versions of Office, or both remember to send legacy .doc files. And have paid their license fees. Or they're using LIbreOffice, but that can have issues too.

TeX files are just simple text documents. You can edit them in any text editor. Word, notepad, Textedit, Emacs, Vi...
It's a portable system by design. If you want to collaborate you just edit the text of the file. I add comments throughout my TeX file in uppercase to clearly label everything so even if you're not familiar with the syntax (\section{Inroduction} is pretty difficult to figure out) you can scroll through and edit the text just as easily as any Word file. You can also annotate the output PDF in the free Adobe reader easily too.

What do you dislike about LaTeX? Is it the syntax, the awful clunky interfaces on some editors? There is also Lyx, also free, which offers a more Word like environment with all the power of LaTeX.

djpbarry

opinion guy wrote: »

Why bother learning a whole new syntax/language as in LaTex

Because Word can't handle large technical documents - it was never designed to do so.

With LaTeX, however, it's a doddle.

And I would argue that, for the purposes of putting together a thesis or paper, to the completely uninitiated, LaTeX is far easier to pick up than Word.

Ostrom

5uspect wrote: »

Sure, if all parties are using Windows or OS X (though I've found fonts don't always transfer well between Mac and Windows versions) and have newer versions of Office, or both remember to send legacy .doc files. And have paid their license fees. Or they're using LIbreOffice, but that can have issues too.

TeX files are just simple text documents. You can edit them in any text editor. Word, notepad, Textedit, Emacs, Vi...
It's a portable system by design. If you want to collaborate you just edit the text of the file. I add comments throughout my TeX file in uppercase to clearly label everything so even if you're not familiar with the syntax (\section{Inroduction} is pretty difficult to figure out) you can scroll through and edit the text just as easily as any Word file. You can also annotate the output PDF in the free Adobe reader easily too.

What do you dislike about LaTeX? Is it the syntax, the awful clunky interfaces on some editors? There is also Lyx, also free, which offers a more Word like environment with all the power of LaTeX.

All of the above

I don't mind the syntax as much, but my field is a long way from a user base large enough to make it workable. As someone mentioned above, sorting out your default format settings in word covers most of the later headaches, and I like being able to interact with my excel graphs. I've never encountered an individual who couldn't instantly open a word document - for reasons of license or otherwise.

I'm sure I will migrate to it someday, but for now, word meets all my needs.

5uspect

I work in an environment where a lot of people primarily use Linux or OS X, so files have to be open and portable. I guess it's a different culture.

LaTeX still produces better looking documents tho!

djpbarry

efla wrote: »

I've never encountered an individual who couldn't instantly open a word document...

Do they open with formatting as it should be? Because in my experience, MS Office applications (I'm thinking PowerPoint in particular here, though) have a tendency to play fast and loose with formatting. That's something I never have to worry about with LaTeX. Nor do I have to worry about backwards compatibility, because TeX files are just text files.

avalon68

djpbarry wrote: »

Do they open with formatting as it should be? Because in my experience, MS Office applications (I'm thinking PowerPoint in particular here, though) have a tendency to play fast and loose with formatting. That's something I never have to worry about with LaTeX. Nor do I have to worry about backwards compatibility, because TeX files are just text files.

I switch between Mac and pc, multiple different versions of word and my formatting is fine. Word can be a powerful tool, but the majority of people never invest the time learning to use it properly, as they have to do upfront to learn latex. My thesis was over 500 pages long, used endnote, lots of formatting, graphs and pictures.....no problems, with the exception of spell check not being able to cope with all of the words it didn't recognize

djpbarry

avalon68 wrote: »

Word can be a powerful tool, but the majority of people never invest the time learning to use it properly...

I'm sure that's probably true, but as I said earlier, the effort needed to produce great-looking professional documents with LaTeX is, in my opinion, significantly less than that required with Word.

And of course, LaTeX is free.

itzme

ToadVine wrote: »

Lads and lassies ... anyone know where I can download LaTeX for Mac OSX? I would appreciate the very, very simple answer, you know, the one where I click the download link and LaTeX downloads to my Mac

Another question ... my PhD is in the social sciences and does not involve a lot of formulae etc. I'm currently using Word and I rely heavily on EndNote. Should I even be thinking of using LaTeX??

Thanks in advance ...

If you are looking for the best client for LaTEX my own advice would be to use Texmaker, it is a cross platform tool so looks and acts the same in mac,pc and linux.

In short, both Word and LaTEX will do what you want. My experience is that LaTEX took time to learn and get proficient at (just like word did) and this costs time and can be frustrating in the short term but in the long term it has saved me serious amounts of time. I force any students I have to try and use it,after they are proficient at it they can use word or LaTEX. No students have switched back to Word.

If you're willing to learn and put time into it, then it is most definitely worth it especially for future publications. If you just need something to do your thesis and are not annoyed/frustrated with Word, then chances are you'll end up being annoyed at having to learn how to use LaTEX and its not worth it.