[texhax] Slightly silly question

[Ettore Aldrovandi]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 08:19:53AM +0100, Uwe Lück wrote:
> Am Montag, den 29.10.2012, 00:51 +0100 schrieb Reinhard Kotucha: 
> > Assuming that files in the miktex directory describe MiKTeX, I doubt
> > that it's useful to point Mac users to them.
> > 
> > Point him to
> > 
> >   http://www.tug.org/mactex
> > 
> > instead.
> 
> Am Montag, den 29.10.2012, 12:37 +1300 schrieb Alan T Litchfield: 
> > http://tug.org/mactex/
> 
> Am Sonntag, den 28.10.2012, 19:21 -0400 schrieb Michael Barr:
> > I just lent a friend of mine the tex-live disk I got from TUG.  He has a 
> > Mac and I have a Win box.  I know how to get started on a PC and I assumed 
> > that somewhere in the Miktex\doc directory there would be a "getting 
> > started" document.  But I couldn't find any such doecument.  I cannot find 
> > anything called local guide, for example.  Now I have been using tex since 
> > about 1985 and I know these things for a PC like the back of my hand, but 
> > I haven't any idea how you do things on a Mac and I don't know how to find 
> > it.  I do know this: if I were a new tex user on a Win machine, I could 
> > not get started from the documentation I could find on mine.
> 
> This is not a question of how to help a Mac user. 
> Michael Barr is complaining that MiKTeX does not provide 
> "getting started" information.  So there is no point in 
> pointing to http://www.tug.org/mactex, rather I would 
> like to point Michael Barr to http://www.miktex.org, 
> most briefly, or he might tell his story on the MiKTeX list, 
> or some MiKTeX user reading texhax could comment on Michael's 
> complaint about MiKTeX.  The Mac part of the story only 
> explains how it came about that Michael found a reason to 
> complain about MiKTeX's documentation.
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
>     Uwe.
 
It is a question of how to help a first time Mac user as well, because:

> 28.10.2012, 19:21 -0400 schrieb Michael Barr:
> > I just lent a friend of mine the tex-live disk I got from TUG.  He has a
> > Mac and I have a Win box.  I know how to get started on a PC and I assumed
	[...]
> > I haven't any idea how you do things on a Mac and I don't know how to find
> > it.  

The answer to Michael's original question, in addition to the mactex
site, would be to point the Mac user to

	Applications -> TeX -> READ ME FIRST.pdf

and

	Applications -> TeX -> What is installed.pdf

from the Finder.  Assuming of course that since the Mac user was lent a tex-live disk
s/he ended up installing texlive.

--Ettore


-- 
Ettore Aldrovandi
Department of Mathematics, Florida State University
1017 Academic Way		 *    http://www.math.fsu.edu/~ealdrov
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA * * aldrovandi at math dot fsu dot edu