[OS X TeX] Just went to Leopard and ...

[Aaron Jackson]

On Nov 6, 2007, at 6:20 PM, win at ucla.edu wrote:

> Dear Colleagues, I have been following this users group for many,  
> many months and hope to obtain your advice having just switched to  
> Leopard.  I have been using plain TeX for nearly 20 years,  
> developing manuscripts in TeX, and then adapting the material to  
> whatever LaTeX macro sets that were relevant to the particular  
> journal or book publisher that I had in mind.  In 2001, I switched  
> systems to Mac OS X but was disappointed with some of the vagaries  
> of TeXshop and OzTeX.  I continued to use, in classic mode,  
> Textures until I discovered that Classic mode was no longer  
> available under system 10.5.  (Happily, I have only switched my  
> laptop, and want to resolve any remaining system conversion  
> problems before proceeding further.)  I still want/need to use  
> plain TeX but in the context of TeXshop, possibly returning to the  
> new OS X compatible Textures once the development bugs have been  
> removed.  However,  whenever I typeset an existing TeX (i.e.,  
> Textures) document---and my installation of TeXshop may have  
> inadvertently imposed A4 page standards, my margins are horribly  
> messed up.  (They are messed up even in the context of using A4  
> paper.)  Is there a simple way to accomplish this?  As a  
> workaround, I have found that the following 4 lines introduced near  
> the beginning (i.e., in the preamble region) of a TeX document will  
> do the job (to the nearest millimeter or so):
>
> \hsize=6.5truein
> \vsize=9.0truein
> \hoffset=0.68truein
> \voffset=0.9truein
>
> (Note that I use "truein" in place of "in" as a dimension to  
> accommodate the use of "\magnification=" statements.)  Is there a  
> simpler or more elegant way to adjust the margins appropriately to  
> conform with US letter paper?  I appreciate any advice that you  
> might have to offer.  Best wishes to all!

If you are getting A4 as your standard page size, which you don't  
want, then that is caused by how your tex installation is configured,  
and has nothing to do with TexShop (a lot of people blame TexShop for  
things that are not TexShop's fault, or under TexShop's control).  To  
fix this (set paper size to standard letter size) do the following  
from the command line:

sudo texconfig-sys

then:

<return>
p <return>
l <return>
<return>
<return>


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