[texworks] Script to install packages on-the-fly

[Herbert Schulz]

On Apr 9, 2010, at 1:31 PM, Stefan Löffler wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've just posted a script on GC
> (http://code.google.com/p/texworks/issues/detail?id=323#c1) to install
> missing packages more or less on-the-fly automatically. So far, I've
> only been able to test it on Linux with TeXLive and a port of MiKTeX. It
> should work on Windows and Mac as well, but I'd really appreciate
> testing reports. Note that you need r592 or later, though, so this
> currently requires that you built Tw yourself.
> 
> Re. Mac: as I understand it, the most popular distro on Mac is MacTeX
> which is based on TeXLive? If so, does it provide the command line
> program tlmgr? If not, is there any command line tool to access the TeX
> file name database?
> 
> Regards,
> Stefan

Howdy,

Yes, tlmgr is part of MacTeX(TeX Live - TL) on the Mac. There is a beautiful front end, TeX Live Utility, that runs under OS X 10.5 and later too. Great for doing updates to the TL distribution.

The TeXworks feature sounds interesting. However, TL seems so complete that I only rarely find something I'm missing. There is a BasicTeX distribution (~85.2MB) for the Mac which is a highly stripped down version of TL and that feature would make lots of sense there.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)