L^ATEX and Mac OS X

Gary L. Gray
Engineering Science and Mechanics
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
USA
gray@engr.psu.edu

Francesco Costanzo
Engineering Science and Mechanics
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
USA
costanzo@engr.psu.edu

Tuesday July 22, 2003

Abstract

The advent of Mac OS X as a UNIX-based operating system with a ``friendly'' interface has made, according to Apple Computer, Mac OS X the most widely used UNIX operating system on the planet. In addition, since Mac OS X's native imaging format is PDF and since the L^ATEX community seems to be heading toward pdflatex as the standard, it would seem that Mac OS X would be a natural platform on which to use TEX. This is a proposal for a panel discussion or birds-of-a-feather session (we do not understand the difference, so we will need some guidance on which to choose) on issues associated with installing, using, and developing for L^ATEX under Mac OS X. We wish to involve users and developers to discuss various topics, including:

• Issues with L^ATEX-created PDF files under Mac OS X.
• Issues with TEX fonts under Mac OS X.
• Different implementations of, and front ends for, TEX under Mac OS X.
• Issues with exporting Mathematica notebooks to L^ATEX for typesetting.
• What is lacking and what is needed to improve the user-experience for users of TEX under Mac OS X?
• Has the Mac OS X TEX mailing list and the Mac OS TEX web site been useful to users and developers?
• In general, what have been the success stories and what have the failures been in the transition to Mac OS X for TEX users?

We hope that this discussion will not only help current users and developers with their current efforts, but will also provide insight into the future direction of TEX under Mac OS X.

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