[OS X TeX] Re: Newbie is confused by Getting Started document

Bob Harris me13013 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 22 03:52:39 CET 2007


Earlier this evening, I wrote:
> I'm new to TeX on Mac OSX.
>   ...
> So it seems to me like all I need is something that
> converts latex to pdf and is easy to install.

Looking at some other latex pages, it looks like all I might need are
these commands
   latex sample.tex
   dvips -o sample.ps sample.dvi
   dvips -o -Ppdf sample.ps sample.dvi
   ps2pdf sample.ps

Though I haven't tried them out yet, those commands (latex, dvips, and
ps2pdf) are all available on the command line without me installing
anything.  Given that I probably would be using TextWrangler as my
editor anyway, is there really any good reason for me to download the
other stuff?  From the standpoint of converting latex to pdf, is there
something these command line tools are lacking?

Thanks,
Bob H

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