[OS X TeX] Re: [tex-live] MacTeX -- xpdf

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 23.04.2013 um 06:39 schrieb Victor Ivrii:

> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 6:56 PM, Reinhard Kotucha
> <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> a friend of mine installed MacTeX (TL-2012) recently.  Everything
>> works like a charm.  However, I wrote a script for him (on Linux)
>> which depends on pdftops (part of xpdf).  It turned out that this
>> program didn't exist on his system.
>> 
>> Aren't the xpdf support programs part of MacTeX or is his installation
>> incomplete?
>> 
>> I don't think that xpdf itself is needed because TeXShop and TeXworks
>> are excellent previewers, but the accompanying commandline tools
>> like pdftops, pdffonts, pdfinfo, pdfimages... are extremely useful.
>> Not to mention that they are extremely reliable.

Yes, it's really a misery that the xpdf/poppler suite or packages are not available in MacTeX! Since TeX Live 2012 most of the cmap and other data files are already part of the installation. The knowledge of libpoppler is also not wide-spread in the MacTeX community. When it comes to the question how to prove whether a displayed artefact is due to *TeX or the PDF viewer, one is usually recommended to use the intrusive Adobe products…

What your friend can do is to install MacPorts or Fink, two package management systems. Both can install the xpdf and poppler packages. Their installers set up PATH and MANPATH. Both are command line oriented and have third-party GUI applications for the die-hard Mac users – although I think that the MacPorts GUI is a shareware.

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

  Pete

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