[OS X TeX] Report on Texmaker--making progress

[Kevin Walzer]

I am still working on making Texmaker  
(http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/) for OS X a little more 
user-friendly. Here's a quick update:

  First, I've spent a lot of time playing with the settings and 
optimizing the preferences--not all of the default preferences 
(pdflatex, for instance) work smoothly out of the box because, at least 
on my iBook, it has trouble picking up my path set up by Gerben's 
installer.

I have also successfully built a standalone version that does not 
require a separate installation of Qt, so this means you will only need 
to install the 4-megabyte application and docs, not the 70 megabyte 
download of Qt. (I've followed the lead of the Lyx-on-Aqua folks here.)

I've tweaked I have also hacked the menu to include the brief user 
manual that the original developer, Pascal Brachet, has created. Before 
releasing my build, I plan to write much more thorough documentation. 
This will probably take a little while.

When I release my build, I will also set up a user mail list that will 
include an online archive. As far as I can tell, there are *no* mailing 
lists for Texmaker on Linux, let alone OS X, so I think this will be 
useful.

If you want to download a working version of the program right now, to 
go http://naranja.umh.es/~atg/. This is Markus Bongard's site. Markus 
has created installers for a wealth of Qt applications on OS X, as well 
as Qt itself, and his site is especially valuable for that reason. But 
Markus's interests aren't focused specifically on LaTex, his build 
requires the large Qt installation (which may be fine if you also want 
other Qt apps), and his version also reflects the roughness that I'm 
trying to address by my tweaks (finding your path, incomplete 
documentation). Once I implement my revisions, the source code will 
also be available for anyone else to download if they so choose, per 
the GPL.

I like Texmaker because it has some neat features that Texshop doesn't 
have--a handy dialog box to input headings, etc.; an outline view of 
the file you're working on; and complete LaTex documentation bundled 
with it. These features, for me at least, make it a little more 
comfortable to use, but it's still nice and compact like Texshop; it 
isn't as complex as iTexMac, which I've never been able to master. With 
the streamlined preferences, it works very smoothly.  It'll be just one 
more good option for writing LaTeX on the Mac.

Cheers,
Kevin


Kevin Walzer, Ph.D.
Editor
WordTech Communications--A New Paradigm of Poetry
http://www.wordtechcommunications.com
http://www.smallbizmac.com
http://www.kevin-walzer.com


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