Mac OSX TeX / To X11 or Not?
Ajanta
general direction as well as specific advice.
I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
(A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including diagrams*,
that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
Windows (don't know what they have).
(B) To be able to view/print similar articles produced on other
people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
For my own working habits, I can use Terminal to produce a file (at
least the text part of it), run tex/latex, preview or print commands.
In fact I strongly prefer not to be distracted by any "live" formatting
as I type the source file.
However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating) editor
and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
So, what do I need to be able to all of this?
In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
both A and B?
Which free/share/cheap tools can I used to produce diagrams, and in
which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can typical
unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or does it have to
be eps)?
I am starting from zero, except for Emacs that comes with OSX. AFAIK, I
don't have TeX, TeX-aware spell-checker, or a dvi previewer. There is
probably some graphics program that came bundled but I don't know what
it can do and if that's what I need.
Many many thanks.
Adrian Burd
Ajanta> However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually
Ajanta> communicating) editor and previewer would be nice when
Ajanta> making corrections. At some stage, a TeX-aware spell check
Ajanta> will be needed too.
Ajanta> So, what do I need to be able to all of this?
TexShop, which can be found at
http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html
Goran Jakupovic
"Ajanta" <aja...@no.spam> wrote in message
news:041220020952400758%aja...@no.spam...
> Here is a newbie question for TeX experts, kindly feel free to offer
> general direction as well as specific advice.
>
> I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
>
> (A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including diagrams*,
> that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
> but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
> Windows (don't know what they have).
If you have Mac OS/X you also "have X11". X11 does not refer to any
graphics/document format but
to version 11 of X-Windows System standard libraries. X Windows is a
network-based graphics window system using the client/server model supported
widely on various UNIX platforms (X in your Mac OS/X is related to X-Windows
in some way or to UNIX? It is now UNIX based isn't it?).
PDF or Portable Document Format is widely supported on various platforms
including Windows, various UNIX
based platforms and Mac OS/X so it should be your preferred choice. (I'm not
sure but they may be better support for PDF on those platforms than on
MAC -- there is far more Linux/Windows user in the world than MAC users)
> (B) To be able to view/print similar articles produced on other
> people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
>
> For my own working habits, I can use Terminal to produce a file (at
> least the text part of it), run tex/latex, preview or print commands.
> In fact I strongly prefer not to be distracted by any "live" formatting
> as I type the source file.
>
> However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating) editor
> and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
> TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
Since Mac OS/X is now UNIX based you may find some open source software(try
www.freshmeat.net and search for Tex, Latex utilities, Ghostscript). Of
course
You'll need gnu compiler to produce binaries from source.
> So, what do I need to be able to all of this?
>
> In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
> both A and B?
Like I said X11 is in no way related to your document format.
> Which free/share/cheap tools can I used to produce diagrams, and in
> which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can typical
> unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or does it have to
> be eps)?
Again PDF is common format supported on all computer platforms of interest.
(Adobe produces its free Acrobat Reader for wide set of
Windows/UNIX/Linux/Mac platforms.
Ghostscript and free Tex utilities should be easily to find for any of these
platforms.)
B
> I am starting from zero, except for Emacs that comes with OSX. AFAIK, I
> don't have TeX, TeX-aware spell-checker, or a dvi previewer. There is
> probably some graphics program that came bundled but I don't know what
> it can do and if that's what I need.
>
> Many many thanks.
There is a lot of open source software you may find usable.Try to find it
...
or try
http://www.rna.nl/tex.html
http://www.ghostscript.com/
Goran
David Eppstein
"Goran Jakupovic" <jakupov...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
> >
> > (A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including diagrams*,
> > that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
> > but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
> > Windows (don't know what they have).
>
> If you have Mac OS/X you also "have X11".
No you don't. One can install X windows under OS X but it does not
automatically come installed. The Mac windowing system is unrelated.
For producing TeX documents on a Mac (portable of course to other
platforms) my personal choice is TeXshop
<http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html>. It does not
reformat the document as you type, but does include an integrated text
editor and pdf previewer. It also includes the standard Mac OS X spell
check services (commands under edit menu to check spelling of requested
words or automatically underline misspelled words as you type). Its
preferred formatting is via pdflatex (or pdftex) but can be made to use
latex and ps2pdf instead.
If you want to include drawings of some sort you would also need a
drawing editor capable of making eps (for latex) or pdf (for pdflatex).
I'm not sure what's available on the freeware side of things, my choice
for this is Adobe Illustrator.
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Benoit Rivet
and Latex page <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/>.
I advise you to use Texshop with Gerben Wierda's teTex compiled for osX
(all freeware). TexShop is a frontend for teTex, with a basic text
editor and previewer. You can use as well any editor you want for the
purpose of editing, the terminal for compiling and preview or acrobat
reader to preview the files compiled with pdftex.
If you need a tex-aware spell checker, you can use Excalibur.
(all software mentionned can be found via
<http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/>)
You can find a dvi viewer on Tom Kiffe's page :
<http://www.kiffe.com/textools.html> and a postcript viewer from the
same source <http://www.kiffe.com/macghostview.html>
As for the portability of postcript or pdf files, I would suggest you to
choose pdf : pdf viewers are available both on windows, unix, linux and
macintosh. Acrobat reader is a reader of choice, but gsview does read
pdf as well. Of course, postcript viewers can be found on every
platform, but unlike pdf viewers, they are not always included in the
basic ditributions (AFAIK, neither windows nor mac os includes a
postcript viewer by default).
If you have many diagrams in eps format, you can use the script esptopdf
to convert them to pdf and include them in your latex document when
compiling with pdftex.
You don't need any X11 environment so far, but if you are used to X11
(eg linux), and somme X11 software is missing in os x but has been
ported via X11, you can install XDarwin (X11 for os X). Try and see
<http://fink.sourceforge.net/> (you need apple's developpers tools to
install software with fink).
--
Benoīt RIVET
Victor Eijkhout
> If you have Mac OS/X you also "have X11".
"OS X". No slash.
And you don't "have X11" unless you install Xdarwin yourself, for
instance through fink. So you "have" it in the sense that it exists.
It's not part of a standard OS install, even if you include the
developer tools.
V.
Victor Eijkhout
> In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
> both A and B?
You can install Xdarwin (which gives you X11) and then you can use all
your unix tools in case you're already conversant with them.
You can also install TeXshop, which will give you basically teTeX, but
with a nice Mac-like environment around it. Personally, I took a look at
TeXshop and deleted it, since the editor is too weak for me. The syntax
colouring was nice, though.
V.
Pickles
wrote:
> I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
[...]
> So, what do I need to be able to all of this?
Take a look at iTeXMac ( http://itexmac.sourceforge.net/ ). I was
using it for some time as a basic setup while I was learning LaTeX.
Since you seem more experienced, you may want to just go with a TeX
i-Package. You can find the main page for that here:
http://www.rna.nl/tex.html
(look for the i-Installer stuff down the page a bit)
You don't need X11 or anything; just use pdflatex or pdftex on your
.tex file instead of latex or tex. It'll produce PDF output that you
can easily view.
HTH
David Eppstein
eijk...@cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) wrote:
You can also run emacs inside the terminal if you want a powerful editor
without having to install anything.
I use BBEdit as my main power editor (although I do also occasionally
run emacs) but mostly for TeX documents I stick with TeXshop.
Ajanta
> You can install Xdarwin (which gives you X11) and then you can use all
> your unix tools in case you're already conversant with them.
Thanks for your helpful comments. Yes, i am familiar with traditional
unix boxes and this is my first time with os x. However, while I am
attcahed to TeX and emacs, that is not the case with commands like xdvi
or dvips although I am certainly "conversant" with them. If something
else makes more sense on a mac, I'd try that. I certainly don't want to
turn my computer into an X11 box merely to run xdvi.
> You can also install TeXshop, which will give you basically teTeX, but
> with a nice Mac-like environment around it. Personally, I took a look at
> TeXshop and deleted it, since the editor is too weak for me.
I might find myself in a similar situation because I can't imagine
giving up emacs for something much less powerful. To clarify a little,
you did not find it practical then to use another editor but use
TeXShop as a TeX engine + previewer?
May I ask you what TeX set up you did end up using on your Mac? I mean
the editor, TeX engine, previewer, tool to produce diagrams and which
format (pdf or eps), the whole set-up.
Thanks again.
A
Ajanta
> The best place to find information on Tex on Mac is the macintosh Tex
> and Latex page <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/>.
>
> I advise you to use Texshop with Gerben Wierda's teTex compiled for osX
> (all freeware)...
I greatly appreciate your detailed and most helpful reply. It will take
me some time to vet it out completely, but I would appreciate some
clarification:
> You can find a dvi viewer on Tom Kiffe's page :
> <http://www.kiffe.com/textools.html> and a postcript viewer from the
> same source <http://www.kiffe.com/macghostview.html>
I am a little confused by this. As far as I could tell from yhe web
sites, TeXshop uses pdftex/pdflatex. Where would dvi and ps viewers be
needed?
> If you have many diagrams in eps format, you can use the script esptopdf
> to convert them to pdf...
I have many tex files but none with diagrams, so am in the happy
situation of having no "legacy" baggage. However, it is good to know in
case something turns up that I am forgetting.
> You don't need any X11 environment so far, but if you are used to X11
> (eg linux), and somme X11 software is missing in os x but has been
> ported via X11, you can install XDarwin (X11 for os X). Try and see
> <http://fink.sourceforge.net/> (you need apple's developpers tools to
> install software with fink).
As I mentioned in a different reply (to Victor Eijkhout), I don't feel
a great a-priori attachment to any X11 tool---of course, I would
consider the X11 route if is necessary to do diagrams, or if it turns
out that no mac previewer is nearly as nice as xdvi.
I am only attached to emacs which comes with OS X, and for the rest I
can choose whatever seems best / most practical.
Thanks again.
A
Richard Kaszeta
> I might find myself in a similar situation because I can't imagine
> giving up emacs for something much less powerful. To clarify a little,
> you did not find it practical then to use another editor but use
> TeXShop as a TeX engine + previewer?
I have a similar situation... I'm getting a new g4 powerbook, but
really want to keep something very close to my current TeX
environment, which is tetex+emacs+auctex+preview-latex+reftex with
some custom stuff, and it's been *really* slick.
Anyone gotten tetex+Xdarwin+(x)emacs+preview-latex working under OS X?
--
Richard W Kaszeta
ri...@kaszeta.org
http://www.kaszeta.org/rich
Ajanta
> Since you seem more experienced,...
Well, I am experienced with TeX, but not with diagrams and also not
with the OS X platform. So it would be best if, considering everything,
you treat me as a newbie. :)
> You don't need X11 or anything; just use pdflatex or pdftex on your
> .tex file instead of latex or tex. It'll produce PDF output that you
> can easily view.
Two points:
(1) If somebody emails me a TeX file that has eps diagrams included in
it, will this work seamlessly? Or do I have to convert each and every
figure to pdf and possibly edit the source to replace each occurance of
file.eps to file.pdf? Maybe my inexpereince is showing?!
(2) I can do the editor, tex, preview, print all from the command line.
However, when making corrections, I would like an integrated
editor+previewer. That's the only time I missed.
Thanks,
A
Carlos Felippa
Buy a Mac and install Textures. Life is too short to keep fighting
with 1970s vintage software.
Ajanta
> I really want to keep something very close to my current TeX
> environment, which is
> tetex+emacs
I am familiar with this, plus dvips+xdvi etc., but what is
> +auctex+preview-latex+reftex
> with some custom stuff, and it's been *really* slick.
> Anyone gotten tetex+Xdarwin+(x)emacs+preview-latex working under OS X?
I hope someone will be able to answer that. (For now I am trying to see
what is possible in osx/aqua/quartz/pdf etc.)
Good luck.
A
Ajanta
> Buy a Mac and install Textures. Life is too short to keep fighting
> with 1970s vintage software.
Thanks, I don't entirely disagree. However, Textures is simply too
pricey (~$500?) for me. I already have a Mac.
A
Rodney Sparapani
and let's you
use any editor that you want. I use GNU Emacs 20.3 which I strongly
recommend.
It's a little hairy to compile, but it is worth it to have a GUI rather
than the terminal
application that comes with OS X by default. See
http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/
--
Rodney Sparapani Medical College of Wisconsin
Sr. Biostatistician Patient Care & Outcomes Research
rspa...@mcw.edu http://www.mcw.edu/pcor
Was 'Name That Tune' rigged? WWLD -- What Would Lombardi Do
Renaud Dreyer
Why would someone who wants TeX to work on "my Mac OS X" need to "buy
a Mac"?
> and install Textures.
... which, of course, hasn't been released for Mac OS X yet.
> Life is too short to keep fighting
> with 1970s vintage software.
What makes TeXShop
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html
and iTeXMac
http://itexmac.sourceforge.net/
"1970's vintage software"? Ciao,
Renaud Dreyer
Richard Kaszeta
> Richard Kaszeta <ri...@kaszeta.org> wrote:
> > I really want to keep something very close to my current TeX
> > environment, which is
> > tetex+emacs
>
> I am familiar with this, plus dvips+xdvi etc., but what is
>
> > +auctex+preview-latex+reftex
Just FYI, auctex is a greatly enhanced TeX editing mode for (x)emacs,
preview-latex is a nice package for emacs 20.x that shows you
graphical previews of your math environments and such, and reftex
(which I think ships with recent emacs versions) is a emacs
enhancement for handling cross-references, bibtex citations, labels,
and such. This combination, while taking some tweaking to work, has
*really* helped my productivity in TeX
> > Anyone gotten tetex+Xdarwin+(x)emacs+preview-latex working under OS X?
>
> I hope someone will be able to answer that. (For now I am trying to see
> what is possible in osx/aqua/quartz/pdf etc.)
Supposedly it isn't too bad to get emacs 20.3 compiled and running
with a GUI. I'll try it when the new powerbook shows up.
David Eppstein
wrote:
I have Textures (for Classic) and stopped using it when I switched to OS
X and TeXshop. The Textures UI is nicer (specifically the ability to
automatically synch window positions in the editer and previewer) but
not enough nicer to convince me to pay when TeXshop is free and good.
Also the fact that TeXshop is based on more standard teTeX and pdftex is
a plus -- I had some problems over the years with coauthors sending me
files that wouldn't work in Textures due to reliance on system-dependent
packages that didn't have working Textures versions. Specifically, most
recently, I was unable to get Textures, revtex4, pstricks, and twocolumn
to coexist -- any three of the four were ok but not all four. The pool
of people using Textures is small enough that it's hard to find help
when something like this happens.
David Eppstein
wrote:
> > You don't need X11 or anything; just use pdflatex or pdftex on your
> > .tex file instead of latex or tex. It'll produce PDF output that you
> > can easily view.
>
> Two points:
>
> (1) If somebody emails me a TeX file that has eps diagrams included in
> it, will this work seamlessly? Or do I have to convert each and every
> figure to pdf and possibly edit the source to replace each occurance of
> file.eps to file.pdf? Maybe my inexpereince is showing?!
If you want to use pdftex you have to convert all your eps files to pdf.
This is very easy with the command-line script epstopdf. Or I think you
can drag them onto TeXshop and it will convert them for you.
If you just care about pdf output, and are using TeXshop, there's an
even easier choice: a menu item switches between processing via pdftex
or via using ghostscript to convert ps to pdf. If you set the
ghostscript option, it will use the eps files you were sent.
Benoit Rivet
> Two points:
>
> (1) If somebody emails me a TeX file that has eps diagrams included in
> it, will this work seamlessly? Or do I have to convert each and every
> figure to pdf and possibly edit the source to replace each occurance of
> file.eps to file.pdf? Maybe my inexpereince is showing?!
There are many solutions to your problem :
1. While using Texshop, you can tell the programm to use tex+ghostcript
instead of pdftex for producing pdf file from your source (you can
change this in the preferences of Texshop). Thus, any tex file with eps
diagrams can be processed without much effort.
2. If the latex file makes use of pstricks, you should try and see if
the package pdftricks won't enable you to use pdftex instead of
tex+ghotscript.
3. As for the problem of replacing "file.eps" by "file.pdf" in the
source, don't worry. It is good practrice not to include the suffix
".eps" or ".jpg" in the source file : the graphics(x) package takes care
of the suffix for you. If you abide by this rule, you won't need to make
any change in the source file.
In any event, if you really need to change the *.eps by *.pdf, a single
search and replace of all occurrence of ".eps" by ".pdf" will do.
The same remark applies for the conversion of eps files to pdf. There is
a (minimal) graphical interface for the script epstopdf (see
<http://www.rudi-schaefer.com/software/>) : you just to drag and drop
all eps files you want to convert, and the script does the job
painlessly in the background.
4. Oh, why not compile with the terminal : "tex source.tex", and then
use "dvipdfm source.dvi" ?
--
Benoīt RIVET
Benoit Rivet
> > You can find a dvi viewer on Tom Kiffe's page :
> > <http://www.kiffe.com/textools.html> and a postcript viewer from the
> > same source <http://www.kiffe.com/macghostview.html>
>
> I am a little confused by this. As far as I could tell from the web
> sites, TeXshop uses pdftex/pdflatex. Where would dvi and ps viewers be
> needed?
You are right : you don't need dvi or ps viewers if you use pdftex for
your own docs. However, you mentioned a dvi previewer and postcript as a
possible format of choice in your post : you might be interested to be
aware that dvi and postcript previewer are available for Mac OS X.
Moreover, MacGhostview has a very up to date ps2pdf converter (based on
version 7.x of ghostcript), which may be better than the ps2pdf
converter bundled with the teTex + ghostcript (version 6.x as far as I
remember) provided by Gerben Wierda.
--
Benoīt RIVET
Porky Pig Jr
> general direction as well as specific advice.
I'm not a TeX expert, but I run LaTex under both Unix (Solari) and
Windows, so I do know a few things.
>
> I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
>
> (A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including diagrams*,
> that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
> but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
> Windows (don't know what they have).
>
Well, strictly speaking, TeX or LaTeX do not rely on X11. You create
.dvi file, then convert it into some other format. Normally you would
convert it to postscript format (using dvips), and then using ps2pdf -
into pdf format. To view the files:
for .dvi files there is X-based utility, xdvi. Under windows, dvi
viewer is also available, forgot its name, something like 'yap' (comes
with MikTex distribution). To view the postscript files, you need a
'ghostview' freeware, runs under X (unix) and there is a version for
windows. To view PDF files you need Acrobat reader (not freeware, but
free, available for either X-Unix or windows).
> (B) To be able to view/print similar articles produced on other
> people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
>
See above regarding ps format. All ps viewers are capable of viewing
eps. dvips generates ps file. Numerious chart/graphs generating
utilities (like gnuplot) also produce either ps or eps. There is a way
to include eps-based graph/chart into your (La)TeX file. Once you've
produced dvi and convert to ps, you can view the whole thing.
> For my own working habits, I can use Terminal to produce a file (at
> least the text part of it), run tex/latex, preview or print commands.
> In fact I strongly prefer not to be distracted by any "live" formatting
> as I type the source file.
I normally use Emacs to produce LaTeX file. There is a special TeX
emacs macro, but I don't use it. A regular Emacs does the syntax
highlighting, and this is sufficient for me. Emacs won't do any live
formatting, don't worry about this, but it will do a syntax
highlighting (like, mark all the comments with red), and this is
useful. Actually, it does very little of that, like if you have \bf
(bold font), Emacs does make whatever follows as 'bold', but this is
probably as much as it does. By no means, it distracts from working on
a text file.
>
> However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating) editor
> and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
> TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
>
There is Lynx you should take a look at. It is X-based tool. Sort of
WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX. You can run it under Mac X 10.x since you
can run XWindows under Mac. To run Lynx under windows, you have to
have Cygwin and Xfree86 for Windows installed (this provides Xwindows
under MS Windows). I took a brief look at Lynx but decided not to
bother.
> So, what do I need to be able to all of this?
>
> In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
> both A and B?
I would recommend to run Xwindows under MAC in any case, since with
Xwindows you can bring in a rich variety of X-based tools. With PDF
for MAC, you can only view PDF files. I'm not sure if MAC has a
postscript viewer which you would certainly need. (probably it does)
There is even Xwindows manager under MAC exists. Then you can run
ghostview for X and also take advantage of X-interface of Emacs.
>
> Which free/share/cheap tools can I used to produce diagrams, and in
> which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can typical
> unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or does it have to
> be eps)?
Gosh, there are PLENTY, you have to look around. In fact, once you
have LaTeX installed, take a look as PStricks which should be part of
the LaTeX distribution. Very powerful subset allowing to create
sophisticated graphs and charts. The only caveat that the end result
cannot be viewed with dvi viewer, like xdvi, you MUST convert it to
the postscript file. But I've found dvi viewers have some dificiencies
anyway, so my workflow is once I change the .tex file, I run latex (to
convert to dvi) and then dvips (to convert to ps), and then view the
results.
To generate the graphs I use gnuplot. Also runs under either X11 or
windows. Can produce eps files which then you can include into LaTeX
file. Then of course, you can view the whole thing only after you
convert it to ps format.
Gnuplot is freeware.
I've found R (which is Splus equivalent) is excellent to generate very
nice graph and charts), but it takes a while to learn the whole
language.
R is freeware.
>
> I am starting from zero, except for Emacs that comes with OSX. AFAIK, I
> don't have TeX, TeX-aware spell-checker, or a dvi previewer. There is
> probably some graphics program that came bundled but I don't know what
> it can do and if that's what I need.
>
> Many many thanks.
I don't believe any graphic programs are bundled with LaTeX
distribution, neither spell-checkers. But dvi previewers probably are
bundled. At least in MikTeX which is (LaTeX distribution for windows).
xdvi probably comes with X11 standard distribution. Not sure of it.
For gnuplot, just search the web. For ghostview, just search the web.
There are sites you can download both X11 and window versions.
For the most comprehensive information on TeX, check
(TeX User Group).
Bunch of links to TeX distributions, and related utilities. Spend some
time going through them.
Incidently, PSTRICKS manuals and samples are on-line, (just follow tug
links), so you can get some idea what kind of graphs and charts you
can generate with this subset. LaTeX comes with its own rather minimal
graphic facilities, but they pale compared with PSTRICKS.
For 'R', check
(truly mind-blowing graphs and charts, but you have to spend some time
learning the language)
Once again, this is what I normally do.
I start with Emacs, and create a LaTeX file. Again, I don't use
special macros, and by default, Emacs has some minimal understanding
of LaTeX format as I've described, not very intrusive.
Then I run Latex line command, which does syntax checking and if
everything worked fine, convert is to dvi. Note that Latex syntax
checking facilities are very primitive. It just tells you something
went wrong on line xyz and stops. You have to figure out what's wrong
which normally requires backtracing.
Once I have dvi file, I normally don't bother to view it with dvi
viewer. Instead, I go ahead, convert it to ps format, and then view it
with ghostview postscript viewer.
If I need to bring in some external graphs and charts, that is,
generated by some other means (I normally use gnuplot, some R (still
learning it), I always create them in eps format, then include those
files into tex file (there are special commands which are part of
LaTeX language), then the same thing - convert to dvi, then to ps,
then view with ps viewer.
Finally, if there is need, convert the whole thing to pdf with ps2pdf
('pdf distiller'). There is one subtlety here. There are some fonts
which looks ok with ps but look ugly with pdf. You have to read about
it, there is plenty on-line documentation on ps2pdf.
There are some facilities to convert those files into HTML as well,
but I'm not an expert on HTML anyway, so I won't comment on this.
I would recommend to use eps as a standard format for graphs and
charts you generate and share.
I don't know if there is any LaTeX distribution for Mac X10 exists.
Check tug. The only distribution I've installed was MikTeX (for MS
Windows), and on Solaris I have TeX distribution installed by someone
else. Well, tug has the most comprehensive list of everything
available. The trick is to find a nice package. You don't wont to
install things piecemeal. in this respect, MikTeX is great, but seems
like this is for MS Windows only.
Also if you are going to do math, at some point check AMSMATH
extensions (also documentation is on-line, check tug links).
Ehnancement of standard TeX or LaTeX facilities. Normally, comes as a
part of the whole distribution.
Finally, get Lesley Lamport's book on Latex. Very good as a starting
point. He's the guy who has invented LaTeX (Knuth invented TeX). There
is a plenty of documentation on-line and yet I've found Lamport's book
very useful and normally have it handy.
Dominik Wassenhoven
> Ajanta <aja...@no.spam> wrote
>>
>> However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating) editor
>> and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
>> TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
>>
>
> There is Lynx you should take a look at. It is X-based tool. Sort of
> WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX. You can run it under Mac X 10.x since you
> can run XWindows under Mac. To run Lynx under windows, you have to
> have Cygwin and Xfree86 for Windows installed (this provides Xwindows
> under MS Windows). I took a brief look at Lynx but decided not to
> bother.
I think you are talking about LyX (www.lyx.org), don't you? Lynx is a
text-only Web-Browser.
Dominik.-
Victor Eijkhout
> May I ask you what TeX set up you did end up using on your Mac? I mean
> the editor, TeX engine, previewer, tool to produce diagrams and which
> format (pdf or eps), the whole set-up.
I'm using emacs, but most of the time use latexpdf instead of outputting
to dvi or ps, and then preview in xpdf. Xpdf has the big advantage over
acrobat reader that it can reload a document, preserving what page
you're on, magnification, et cetera.
V.
David Kastrup
> There is a setting in TeXshop that allows you to just use it as a
> viewer and let's you
> use any editor that you want. I use GNU Emacs 20.3 which I strongly
> recommend.
That's stone age. If you are bent on using an Emacs 20.x (which I
think by now a pretty bad idea), you should at least use the last
release, 20.7. No need to meddle with more bugs than necessary.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
David Kastrup
> Ajanta <aja...@no.spam> writes:
> > Richard Kaszeta <ri...@kaszeta.org> wrote:
> > > I really want to keep something very close to my current TeX
> > > environment, which is
> > > tetex+emacs
> >
> > I am familiar with this, plus dvips+xdvi etc., but what is
> >
> > > +auctex+preview-latex+reftex
>
> Just FYI, auctex is a greatly enhanced TeX editing mode for (x)emacs,
> preview-latex is a nice package for emacs 20.x
preview-latex sucks for Emacs 20.x since Emacs 20.x can't display any
images. You need Emacs-21 for that, and a windowing environment for
which it supports images. X11 will work fine, with Windows you need
either a very fresh Emacs directly from CVS, or an XEmacs. With
MacOSX, the best bet is probably the X11 port.
> that shows you graphical previews of your math environments and
> such, and reftex (which I think ships with recent emacs versions) is
> a emacs enhancement for handling cross-references, bibtex citations,
> labels, and such. This combination, while taking some tweaking to
> work, has *really* helped my productivity in TeX
>
> > > Anyone gotten tetex+Xdarwin+(x)emacs+preview-latex working under OS X?
> >
> > I hope someone will be able to answer that. (For now I am trying to see
> > what is possible in osx/aqua/quartz/pdf etc.)
We had positive reports for that, but for the X11 Emacs, not the
Cocoa Emacs.
David Kastrup
Bear with me if this somehow sounds like an infomercial for a certain
product combination. It is all Free Software...
porky_...@my-deja.com (Porky Pig Jr) writes:
> I'm not a TeX expert, but I run LaTex under both Unix (Solari) and
> Windows, so I do know a few things.
>
> >
> > I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
> >
> > (A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including
> > diagrams*, that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX
> > (which has PDF) but also on common unix/linux systems (which have
> > X11), and possibly Windows (don't know what they have).
If you produce scientific articles, you _need_ either
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html> or
<URL:http://www.xemacs.org>, and all of
<URL:http://www.nongnu.org/auctex> (typically bundled with XEmacs),
<URL:http://preview-latex.sourceforge.net>,
<URL:http://zon.astro.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/reftex/> (bundled with
both XEmacs and Emacs).
Under Windows, preview-latex will only cooperate with the very latest
CVS checkouts of Emacs, so you might want to use XEmacs instead, at
least there.
> Well, strictly speaking, TeX or LaTeX do not rely on X11.
True. But coming from a Free Software background, many utilities
centred around TeX/LaTeX that need to display things are written for
X11.
If you want to have as similar a setup on Unix as on Windows, use
TeXlive for all of the systems, or use teTeX on Unix and its cousin
fpTeX on Windows.
> > For my own working habits, I can use Terminal to produce a file
> > (at least the text part of it), run tex/latex, preview or print
> > commands. In fact I strongly prefer not to be distracted by any
> > "live" formatting as I type the source file.
You'll love preview-latex (see its URL in the first paragraph). It is
not live, as it will only ever act on-demand (keystroke, mouseclick).
So it will never attempt to typeset any half-finished formula when you
don't wish that. But once you wish it, the formula will be replaced
by a perfect WYSIWYG rendition in the source buffer, not in a separate
preview window. Indispensible for developing streams of complex math
online instead of first drafting with pencil and paper.
> I normally use Emacs to produce LaTeX file. There is a special TeX
> emacs macro, but I don't use it.
AUC TeX. It's worth it. It properly indents your source code for
readability while you type, it has convenient short cuts for
processing files and multifile documents, it offers all environments
and commands provided by the current documentclass and packages in
menus and for command completion.
> A regular Emacs does the syntax highlighting, and this is sufficient
> for me. Emacs won't do any live formatting, don't worry about this,
For people that don't mind it, there is
<URL:http://x-symbol.sourceforge.net> which replaces control sequences
like \sum or \"a or so real-time by an appropriate symbol character at
the cursor. Since this occurs only at the current cursor location,
the distraction this causes is very minor. There is also
<URL:http://pauillac.inria.fr/whizzytex/> which will update a separate
preview window in realtime while you type. This, of course, _will_
cause LaTeX to choke on incomplete code from time to time, and it
places quite an impact on the system. Don't use it on time-sharing
systems if you don't want to become unpopular.
So there is a lot of choice and gimmicks available, but my strongest
recommendation goes to the set I outlined in the first paragraph.
> but it will do a syntax highlighting (like, mark all the comments
> with red), and this is useful. Actually, it does very little of
> that, like if you have \bf (bold font), Emacs does make whatever
> follows as 'bold', but this is probably as much as it does. By no
> means, it distracts from working on a text file.
Right on pure text. Unfortunately, with complex math the
transliteration itself distracts from perceiving the underlying
math. This distraction gets alleviated by preview-latex.
> > However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating)
> > editor and previewer would be nice when making corrections.
It does not get any more integrated than preview-latex. Note that
since the level at which previews are integrated is that of single
formulas, figures, etc. This means that for page layout control, you
will still need a separate, page-oriented previewer like xdvi. But
for proofreading/corrections, preview-latex is perfect where heavy
math or other strange source code is involved.
> > At some stage, a TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
AUCTeX calls ispell with appropriate options for TeX if you type C-c
C-c Spell RET or similar variants.
> There is Lynx you should take a look at. It is X-based tool. Sort of
> WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX. You can run it under Mac X 10.x since
> you can run XWindows under Mac. To run Lynx under windows, you have
> to have Cygwin and Xfree86 for Windows installed (this provides
> Xwindows under MS Windows). I took a brief look at Lynx but decided
> not to bother.
LyX <URL:http://www.lyx.org>, not Lynx. LyX offers a highly visual
markup that is close enough to the typeset results as to not distract
from the contents (particular regarding the complex math angle), but
that has quite a different screen representation than the printout,
which is achieved with LaTeX. This can be an advantage, since typical
TeX fonts are optimized for 600dpi high contrast devices, and you can
choose your screen fonts independently in LyX. There is also
<URL:http://www.texmacs.org> which is true real-time antialiased
WYSIWYG and does not use TeX in itself, but algorithms and fonts
acquired from it.
Both LyX and TeXmacs have the disadvantage that they require
commitment: they have their own document formats and are merely able
to import and export LaTeX code, with varying amounts of success. In
the process, all LaTeX source code formatting gets lost. LyX exports
pretty decent LaTeX, so if you _create_ documents with it and send
other people the exports, they will not complain much. But you should
not even expect it to arrive at the same LyX document when you
reimport the documents it has exported itself, so if you want to work
together with other people on the same document, split it into
separate files for which different people are responsible, or get the
others to use LyX as well.
> > In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
> > both A and B?
>
> I would recommend to run Xwindows under MAC in any case, since with
> Xwindows you can bring in a rich variety of X-based tools.
Yes.
> There is even Xwindows manager under MAC exists. Then you can run
> ghostview for X and also take advantage of X-interface of Emacs.
Yes.
> > Which free/share/cheap tools can I used to produce diagrams, and
> > in which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can
> > typical unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or
> > does it have to be eps)?
>
> Gosh, there are PLENTY, you have to look around. In fact, once you
> have LaTeX installed, take a look as PStricks which should be part
> of the LaTeX distribution. Very powerful subset allowing to create
> sophisticated graphs and charts. The only caveat that the end result
> cannot be viewed with dvi viewer, like xdvi, you MUST convert it to
> the postscript file.
Fortunately, preview-latex works just fine with PStricks.
> But I've found dvi viewers have some dificiencies anyway, so my
> workflow is once I change the .tex file, I run latex (to convert to
> dvi) and then dvips (to convert to ps), and then view the results.
That's what happens inside of preview-latex as well, but it is very
cleverly streamlined and happens mostly in the background and behind
the scenes, so you hardly notice.
> To generate the graphs I use gnuplot. Also runs under either X11 or
> windows. Can produce eps files which then you can include into LaTeX
> file. Then of course, you can view the whole thing only after you
> convert it to ps format.
Oh, I view those graphs right in my Emacs buffer with you-guess-what.
> Then I run Latex line command, which does syntax checking and if
> everything worked fine, convert is to dvi. Note that Latex syntax
> checking facilities are very primitive. It just tells you something
> went wrong on line xyz and stops. You have to figure out what's wrong
> which normally requires backtracing.
AUCTeX pops up a separate window and gives wordy explanations for most
common LaTeX errors.
> Once I have dvi file, I normally don't bother to view it with dvi
> viewer. Instead, I go ahead, convert it to ps format, and then view
> it with ghostview postscript viewer.
I don't even generate dvi files explicitly until I am nearly before
printing. You-guess-what makes this unnecessary.
> Also if you are going to do math, at some point check AMSMATH
> extensions (also documentation is on-line, check tug links).
texdoc amsldoc
will throw its documentation on the screen, once you have installed a
typical TeX distribution.
Richard Kaszeta
> > Just FYI, auctex is a greatly enhanced TeX editing mode for (x)emacs,
> > preview-latex is a nice package for emacs 20.x
>
> preview-latex sucks for Emacs 20.x since Emacs 20.x can't display any
> images. You need Emacs-21 for that, and a windowing environment for
> which it supports images. X11 will work fine, with Windows you need
> either a very fresh Emacs directly from CVS, or an XEmacs. With
> MacOSX, the best bet is probably the X11 port.
Oops, I meant 21.x.
I'll have fun trying it out on OS X. :)
> > > > Anyone gotten tetex+Xdarwin+(x)emacs+preview-latex working under OS X?
> > >
> > > I hope someone will be able to answer that. (For now I am trying to see
> > > what is possible in osx/aqua/quartz/pdf etc.)
>
> We had positive reports for that, but for the X11 Emacs, not the
> Cocoa Emacs.
Thanks, I'll have to try it both ways, and send appropriate feedback.
Ken Williams
> You can also install TeXshop, which will give you basically teTeX, but
> with a nice Mac-like environment around it. Personally, I took a look at
> TeXshop and deleted it, since the editor is too weak for me. The syntax
> colouring was nice, though.
I use TeXshop daily, with emacs (in the terminal) as my primary
editor. It works great. Just tell TeXshop that you're using an
external editor (Preferences->Document->Configure for external
editor), and it will become a pure rendering/BibTex/etc. program. I'm
quite pleased with this setup because I too found the TeXshop
integrated editor too weak.
-Ken
Jeanne Clelland
which includes all future upgrades plus email support from the author.
As for text editors, OzTeX plays nicely with BBEdit (though not BBEdit
Lite) and Pepper (which doesn't run under Jaguar and is unfortunately no
longer avaiable). It should also work with Alphatk (though I haven't
had any luck with it and haven't tried that hard since I'm happy with
Pepper), and if they ever release Alpha X it should work well with that
too. I imagine you could get it to work with emacs as well.
Dunno about graphics tools, but if you have some means of producing EPS
files, you can include them pretty easily with OzTeX.
Jeanne
Robert Love
> (A) To produce scientific/mathematical articles, *including diagrams*,
> that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
> but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
> Windows (don't know what they have).
For OSX you have two nice, free choices: iTeXMac and TeXShop
Both are nicely packaged implementations of teTeX with native OSX front
ends(no X11). Either will do you 'write'. I have both installed just
to play with but I'll tell you I'm doing the majority of my work in
TeXShop.
They include Ghostscript to handle any Postscript files you encounter
externally or generate yourself.
I also have a carbonized Emacs so I can run Auctex & Reftex. I do large,
structured edits in emacs.
Other programs I use are gnuplot, again for OSX, not X11, Mathematica,
Create, PStill and OmniGraffle.
>
> (B) To be able to view/print similar articles produced on other
> people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
The setup I described is all at home. At work I have teTeX running
on Linux with X11. Source files, diagrams etc work just as well when
transferred between the systems.
If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them. You'll also
find
the newsgroup comp.text.tex to have several Mac users there who can make
similar recommendations.
Come on in--the water is fine.
Victor Eijkhout
> Just tell TeXshop [...]
> and it will become a pure rendering/BibTex/etc. program.
Ah yes, BibTeX. I knew there was another reason. Running TeX purely from
a unix shell environment I can use this cute makefile I once found,
which automatically calls bibtex and makeindex, and will call LaTeX
multiple times until all references are correct.
Anyway. There's more than one way to run TeX on OS X, and it all depends
on what you're most comfortable with.
V.
dr. gee
[snip]
>> You can also install TeXshop, which will give you basically teTeX, but
>> with a nice Mac-like environment around it. Personally, I took a look at
>> TeXshop and deleted it, since the editor is too weak for me.
>
>I might find myself in a similar situation because I can't imagine
>giving up emacs for something much less powerful. To clarify a little,
>you did not find it practical then to use another editor but use
>TeXShop as a TeX engine + previewer?
hello,
i just installed TeXShop 2 weeks ago on my powerbook (Mac OS X). i am new to
OS X. I was more a windows & Unix user. there was a thread about it.
TeXShop looks quite nice but i think emacs is a more powerful editor. so i
also got a mac-emacs (http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/) that does syntax
highlighting nicely. (the emacs that comes with OS X only runs in terminal
mode.)
so i may end up only using TexShop as a engine+speller+preview.
regards,
pam @ home 小洞
May all spammers & telemarketers die an agonizing death; have no
burial places; their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one
room to another for 1000 years.
我自橫刀向天笑，去留肝膽兩崑崙
Jacques Distler
Jr <porky_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Well, strictly speaking, TeX or LaTeX do not rely on X11. You create
>.dvi file, then convert it into some other format. Normally you would
>convert it to postscript format (using dvips), and then using ps2pdf -
>into pdf format.
Pdftex goes straight from TeX -> PDF.
TeXShop and iTeXMac use either
1) pdftex
or (at your option)
2) tex+dvips+ghostscript
to produce pdf.
>To view the files:
>for .dvi files there is X-based utility, xdvi. Under windows, dvi
>viewer is also available, forgot its name, something like 'yap' (comes
>with MikTex distribution). To view the postscript files, you need a
>'ghostview' freeware, runs under X (unix) and there is a version for
>windows. To view PDF files you need Acrobat reader (not freeware, but
>free, available for either X-Unix or windows).
On MacOSX, Display-PDF is the native graphics environment. TeXShop and
iTeXMac come with integrated PDF previewers using the OS PDF rendering.
There are some bugs (still) in the system PDF rendering. So sometimes
you may want to use AcroRead to view the file, instead of the built-in
viewer.
>
>> (B) To be able to view/print similar articles produced on other
>> people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
>>
>
>See above regarding ps format. All ps viewers are capable of viewing
>eps. dvips generates ps file.
eps figures work fine with method 2) above. Pdftex can't use 'em,
though, unless you use epstopdf to convert them to pdf figures (both
can coexist if you need to be compatible with pdf-challenged users on
other platforms).
>> However, if possible, an integrated (or mutually communicating) editor
>> and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
>> TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
cocoaAspell.
>I would recommend to run Xwindows under MAC in any case, since with
>Xwindows you can bring in a rich variety of X-based tools.
To each his own. I personally decided that installing X11 wasn't worth
the time or the disk space.
>With PDF
>for MAC, you can only view PDF files.
That's a bit narrow-minded. Double-click on a dvi file (for instance)
and TeXShop will convert it to pdf and display it for you.
>> Which free/share/cheap tools can I used to produce diagrams, and in
>> which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can typical
>> unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or does it have to
>> be eps)?
If you are at an academic institution, you might find out what the
Academic price on Adobe Illustrator is. It was quite cheap for me, and
it is much nicer than the freeware alternatives (like, say, XFig).
It handles both eps and pdf with aplomb. And it does Bezier Curves,
Gradient Fills, and all the stuff to do really professional-looking
illustrations.
And you can do nifty stuff like tex an equation, and then drag it into
a figure you've drawn in Illustrator to get *real* texed labels on your
figures.
(Yes, you can do that with PSTricks, but this is MUCH easier.)
>Finally, if there is need, convert the whole thing to pdf with ps2pdf
>('pdf distiller'). There is one subtlety here. There are some fonts
>which looks ok with ps but look ugly with pdf. You have to read about
>it, there is plenty on-line documentation on ps2pdf.
This is not a "subtlety". The bitmapped versions of the Computer Modern
fonts look awful when used in PDF. (And you have to run MetaFont to
generate them at all the relevant screen and printer resolutions.)
Since the Postscript versions of these fonts are now free, there is
little reason to use the bitmapped versions.
Set your .map files correctly, and you should be good to go. (This is
all done correctly in Gerben Wierda's MacOSX teTeX distribution.)
--
PGP public key: http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/distler.asc
David Eppstein
Jacques Distler <dis...@golem.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:
> If you are at an academic institution, you might find out what the
> Academic price on Adobe Illustrator is. It was quite cheap for me, and
> it is much nicer than the freeware alternatives (like, say, XFig).
>
> It handles both eps and pdf with aplomb. And it does Bezier Curves,
> Gradient Fills, and all the stuff to do really professional-looking
> illustrations.
>
> And you can do nifty stuff like tex an equation, and then drag it into
> a figure you've drawn in Illustrator to get *real* texed labels on your
> figures.
What program are you dragging your texed equations from?
It's too bad Equation Service and Illustrator don't seem to get along
very well (doesn't work at all in Illo text boxes, and Illo messes up
the fonts when you drag equations onto it).
If anyone doesn't know about it, Equation Service plugs into OS X so
that from any Cocoa app (like TextEdit) you can type a TeX-format
equation, select the text, and type cmd-backquote, and it magically
renders the equation for you.
<http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/EquationService/>
Jacques Distler
Eppstein <epps...@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>> And you can do nifty stuff like tex an equation, and then drag it into
>> a figure you've drawn in Illustrator to get *real* texed labels on your
>> figures.
>
>What program are you dragging your texed equations from?
Use TeXShop to produce a PDF file. Open the PDF file in Illustrator.
Drag ...
>
>It's too bad Equation Service and Illustrator don't seem to get along
>very well (doesn't work at all in Illo text boxes, and Illo messes up
>the fonts when you drag equations onto it).
Illustrator is a Carbon App, so it will not support most Services,
including EquationService.
As to the fonts, you need to download and uncompress
http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/fonts/TeX-Illustrator.sit
http://www.math.jussieu.fr/~arabia/TeX/TeX-Cyr-Illustrator.sea.hqx
and install the folders "TeX-Illustrator" and "TeX-Cyr-Illustrator" in
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/
Then Illustrator will render the fonts correctly.
William F. Adams
>And you can do nifty stuff like tex an equation, and then drag it into
>a figure you've drawn in Illustrator to get *real* texed labels on your
>figures.
Even easier / nicer / more elegant would be to use the spiffy ``WarmReader''
plug-in for Adobe Illustrator to automagically insert the labels based on your
specs when TeX processes the .eps.
Nifty page describing it here:
http://www-texdev.mpce.mq.edu.au/WARM/WARMhome/
William
--
William Adams
http://members.aol.com/willadams
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Carlos Felippa
Maybe off topic, but IMHO pstricks is a waste of time. I had one student
who used that for his PhD thesis on a Sun, and he spend more time
hacking figures than on research. He is now married+2 kids+mortgage,
and uses Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac. A tragic story or the
other way around?
Porky Pig Jr
>
> I think you are talking about LyX (www.lyx.org), don't you? Lynx is a
> text-only Web-Browser.
>
> Dominik.-
Of course you are correct. I just had Lynx on my mind, since I've used
it a few times recently attempting to navigate through Yahoo (with
dismal results). Mea culpa.
dr. gee
>Maybe off topic, but IMHO pstricks is a waste of time. I had one student
>who used that for his PhD thesis on a Sun, and he spend more time
not entirely waste of time.
i inherited a lot ps graphs made by someone who left & i didn't have the
data to regenerate the figures. pstrick was wonderful.
bye now,
Ajanta
> If you produce scientific articles, you _need_ either
> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html> or
> <URL:http://www.xemacs.org>, and all of
I assume you have successfully built both of these on OS X. I have
10.2.2, with Developer Tools installed. However my attempts to build
either one failed.
GNU Emacs: 21.2 (which appears to be the most recent public release)
refused even ./configure. I followed Andrew Choi's instructions and got
a later (21.3 beta?) version by CVS; this one ran ./configure but make
eventually failed.
XEmacs: I got 21.4; both configure and make ran fine but gave me a
terminal-like emacs. Apparently couldn't detect any windowing system on
the mac!
Is there any special trick to compiling either of these versions on OSX?
Ajanta
Raffael Herzog
Ajanta wrote:
> I assume you have successfully built both of these on OS X. I have
> 10.2.2, with Developer Tools installed. However my attempts to build
> either one failed.
I don't know MacOS X at all, but a friend of mine found a
package for GNU Emacs 21. It was just a few clicks to ins-
tall Emacs on MacOS X. AFAIK, XEmacs doesn't support Aqua.
cu,
Raffi
--
=> Neu im Usenet? Fragen? http://www.use-net.ch/usenet_intro_de.html <=
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is
no difference, but in practice, there is.
Raffael Herzog - her...@raffael.ch - http://www.raffael.ch - ICQ #67961355
Rodney Sparapani
http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/ under editors.
--
Rodney Sparapani Medical College of Wisconsin
Sr. Biostatistician Patient Care & Outcomes Research
rspa...@mcw.edu http://www.mcw.edu/pcor
Was 'Name That Tune' rigged? WWLD -- What Would Lombardi Do
Kai Großjohann
> GNU Emacs: 21.2 (which appears to be the most recent public release)
> refused even ./configure. I followed Andrew Choi's instructions and got
> a later (21.3 beta?) version by CVS; this one ran ./configure but make
> eventually failed.
Maybe that bug can be fixed?
> XEmacs: I got 21.4; both configure and make ran fine but gave me a
> terminal-like emacs. Apparently couldn't detect any windowing system on
> the mac!
I think that XEmacs can use X11 on the Mac. You can get X11 on the
Mac with XDarwin, I think.
--
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn (Frank Nobis)
Schone Mullerin
> I followed Andrew Choi's instructions and got
> a later (21.3 beta?) version by CVS; this one ran ./configure but make
> eventually failed.
This is a cvs tree, so it's frequently broken for "minority"
platforms. The current sources as of yesterday, for example, were
broken for darwin/osx (emacs/lib-src/getopt.c). When this happens you
generally need to checkout an earlier version of the problematic file.
> XEmacs: I got 21.4; both configure and make ran fine but gave me a
> terminal-like emacs. Apparently couldn't detect any windowing system on
> the mac!
Do you have a full X11 installed (headers etc)?
For xemacs as well as an X11 build of gnu emacs you should consider
using fink's configuration instead of doing it manually. Likewise
texinfo.
Ajanta
> 4. Oh, why not compile with the terminal : "tex source.tex", and then
> use "dvipdfm source.dvi" ?
I am comfortable with terminal, but does the above have any advantages
over the one-step "pdftex source.tex"?
Andrew Choi
> In article <061220020416350201%aja...@no.spam>, Ajanta wrote:
> > I followed Andrew Choi's instructions and got a later (21.3 beta?)
> > version by CVS; this one ran ./configure but make eventually failed.
>
> This is a cvs tree, so it's frequently broken for "minority"
> platforms. The current sources as of yesterday, for example, were
> broken for darwin/osx (emacs/lib-src/getopt.c). When this happens you
> generally need to checkout an earlier version of the problematic file.
Oh no, not again. This patch will fix it:
Index: getopt.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lib-src/getopt.c,v
retrieving revision 1.21
diff -u -r1.21 getopt.c
--- getopt.c 5 Dec 2002 15:30:09 -0000 1.21
+++ getopt.c 6 Dec 2002 17:32:51 -0000
@@ -83,7 +83,11 @@
# include "gettext.h"
#endif
#endif
+#ifdef HAVE_LIBINTL_H
#define _(msgid) gettext (msgid)
+#else
+#define _(msgid) (msgid)
+#endif
#if defined _LIBC && defined USE_IN_LIBIO
# include <wchar.h>
Ajanta
exercise is TeX-related for me]
Andrew Choi <akochoi...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> Oh no, not again. This patch will fix it:
>
> Index: getopt.c
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lib-src/getopt.c,v
> retrieving revision 1.21
> ...
Thanks. I am sure this would have helped. Fortunately I was able to get
the emacs 21.3.50 built by Enrico Franconi, also thanks to Rodney
Sparapani earlier in the thread. (For future reference, what does a
"patch" like this mean? For example would the file getopt.c get
*replaced* by this text, *appended* or something else? Sorry, very
little compiling experience here...)
Franconi's compilation, "which does work out of the box" and is an
extremely recent build (Dec 2) available at
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/%7Efranconi/mac-emacs ,
still leaves me with a few questions:
1. There seem to be *three* executables of identical size (my disk is
not full, but why waste 16MB if one doesn't have to?):
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs*
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
The first of these is probably what does the work because I can run
it from the terminal by typing its path name. The other two seem
to be using up 16MB for no good reason I can decipher: they don't even
run [I get Fatal error (6).Abort]. What are they for and can I safely
delete them? Even if they are needed, shouldn't a symbolic link
suffice?
2. Speaking of disk space, I am not going to use any language besides
English. How can I safely delete the code supporting other langauges
and save some disk space? In doing this manually, I am afraid of
inadvertantly deleting some file that supports latin/ascii or symbols.
(There ought to be a script to do this, probably a make target.)
Basically, emacs is a large distribution and I want to clean up
everythign I don't actually need. This includes duplicate executables,
non-English support, and sources needed to build emacs but not to run
it lnow.
3. When running emacs, "preference" panel in toolbar is broken.
4. The window is normal video (black text on white background).
I would prefer reverse video (white text on black background) if
possible. How to get that?
5. At some point (I must have pressed the wrong key) the program
complained I don't have ispell. That is true, I haven't gotten around
to it and should. However, would aspell be better, as some claim, and
if so how to make emacs work with it instead?
Thanks to every one. This is great help.
A
Susan Kayser
>
> Here is a newbie question for TeX experts, kindly feel free to offer
> general direction as well as specific advice.
>
> I have to assemble a TeX setup. My needs are:
>
> that will be portable, ie, work not only on my Mac OSX (which has PDF)
> but also on common unix/linux systems (which have X11), and possibly
> Windows (don't know what they have).
>
> people's systems (diagrams likely to be in EPS format?).
>
> least the text part of it), run tex/latex, preview or print commands.
> In fact I strongly prefer not to be distracted by any "live" formatting
> as I type the source file.
>
> and previewer would be nice when making corrections. At some stage, a
> TeX-aware spell check will be needed too.
>
>
> In particular, do I have to install X11 or will OSX/PDF suffice for
> both A and B?
>
> which format should they be for easy portability (ie, can typical
> unix/linux TeX installation out there deal with pdf or does it have to
> be eps)?
>
> don't have TeX, TeX-aware spell-checker, or a dvi previewer. There is
> probably some graphics program that came bundled but I don't know what
> it can do and if that's what I need.
>
> Many many thanks.
No one seems to have mentioned OzTeX, a shareware ($30) version of
Tex/LaTeX that runs natively in OS X. It used to come with a text editor
and spell checker (Alpha and Excelsior, I think), but may not for OS X.
I use BBEdit Lite (freeware), myself, which you can link with OxTeX (but
BBEdit and OzTeX don't agree on line numbers, which makes editing a bit
awkward). See: http://www.trevorrow.com/oztex/ for more detail.
As for figures, I can't advise about a really cheap version. I use
Canvas, which will save in EPS format, but although it is cheaper than
Illustrator or Freehand (and can handle bitmaps as well as vector
drawing), it costs almost $100 for the "Canvas 7 Standard Version", and
I don't know if it's been updated for OS X. See: www.deneba.com.
Susan K
--
Dr. Susan Kayser SDSS at FermiLab
Ajanta
> No one seems to have mentioned OzTeX,...
> ...
> As for figures, I can't advise about a really cheap version. I use
> Canvas,..
Thank you. I am aware of OzTeX. It wasn't expressly recommended here
but is amply mentioned on the sites people did recommend. This is the
first time I have heard of canvas, however. I shall certainly look into
both of them.
A
Susan Kayser
I meant Excalibur, for a TeX-aware spell checker on the Mac, by the way.
Apparently, it's OK on OS X.
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
> 1. There seem to be *three* executables of identical size (my disk is
> not full, but why waste 16MB if one doesn't have to?):
> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs*
> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
Check their inodes: they should be hardlinks and thus wasting even less
space than symlinks.
> 2. Speaking of disk space, I am not going to use any language besides
What kind of machine are you running this on ?
I ask because my machine is about 6 years old by now and yet 50MB of
disk space is not a big concern. This is not just rhetorical: the
version 21.3.50 you're using is significantly larger than 21.2 and
this was the result of a conscious decision, so I'd be interested to hear
of how serious a problem it might be.
> 3. When running emacs, "preference" panel in toolbar is broken.
It is generally safe to assume that "broken" is a hopelessly useless
characterization of a behavior. Please expand.
> 4. The window is normal video (black text on white background).
> I would prefer reverse video (white text on black background) if
> possible. How to get that?
Maybe the -rv option ? Otherwise, M-x customize-face RET default RET
and change the foreground/background colors.
> 5. At some point (I must have pressed the wrong key) the program
> complained I don't have ispell. That is true, I haven't gotten around
> to it and should. However, would aspell be better, as some claim, and
> if so how to make emacs work with it instead?
aspell emulates ispell so the ispell support works with aspell as well.
Maybe someone has improved Emacs' ispell support to take advantage of
some of the new features offered by aspell but I haven't heard about it.
Stefan
Ajanta
> >>>>> "Ajanta" == Ajanta <aja...@no.spam> writes:
> > 1. There seem to be *three* executables of identical size (my disk is
> > not full, but why waste 16MB if one doesn't have to?):
> > /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs*
> > /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
> > /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
>
> Check their inodes: they should be hardlinks and thus wasting even less
> space than symlinks.
I am not familar with inodes. However, I do remember that the dir size
decreases by 16MB when I moved the files out. I played around like that
and the disk space seemed real. Anyway, why do we need three
executables two of which seem to do nothing?
> What kind of machine are you running this on ?
Powerbook, 10.2.2, a few weeks old.
> I ask because my machine is about 6 years old by now and yet 50MB of
> disk space is not a big concern. This is not just rhetorical: the
> version 21.3.50 you're using is significantly larger than 21.2 and
> this was the result of a conscious decision, so I'd be interested to hear
> of how serious a problem it might be.
I don't have a space crunch yet. I just want to get in to the habit of
not accumulating things that aren't needed. In the release 21.3.50,
Emacs.app is approx 120MB.
> > 3. When running emacs, "preference" panel in toolbar is broken.
>
> It is generally safe to assume that "broken" is a hopelessly useless
> characterization of a behavior. Please expand.
It is "unhighlighted" in the mac style. You can't open the panel.
> > 4. The window is normal video (black text on white background).
> > I would prefer reverse video (white text on black background) ...
> Maybe the -rv option ? Otherwise, M-x customize-face RET default RET
> and change the foreground/background colors.
Don't know how to give the -rv option when I am clicking on an icon in
the dock, which is how I'd mostly run this program. In most mac-style
apps I would expect to set such things in a Preferences panel. Anyway,
I'll try the customize-face way that you suggested.
A
new2osx
Thank you all very much indeed. I have decided, actually made a short
list, as follows:
1. One spends a lot of time with the editor, so it is one personal
attachment I have and that happens to be Emacs. I am keeping the
terminal Emacs (21.1) that came with my OSX distribution, but will try
the GUI one too. I have a few questions; I posted those under a
different subject "Emacs 21.3.50 on Mac OSX 10.2.2".
2. For the time being at least I wont get X11 but will try to work with
the native aqua/quartz/display-pdf.
3. I'll get Gerben Wierda's teTeX. I'll probably use command line
pdftex but I'll also try TeXShop. In addition, I will try previe-latex,
auctex, reftex combo recoomended by a few posters.
4. I have noted the recommendations for diagrams but I'm going to
revisit this issue later, after I have gotten the basic setup going.
A
David Kastrup
> I am deeply appreciative of all the feedback and truly helpful answers.
> Thank you all very much indeed. I have decided, actually made a short
> list, as follows:
>
> 1. One spends a lot of time with the editor, so it is one personal
> attachment I have and that happens to be Emacs. I am keeping the
> terminal Emacs (21.1) that came with my OSX distribution, but will try
> the GUI one too. I have a few questions; I posted those under a
> different subject "Emacs 21.3.50 on Mac OSX 10.2.2".
>
> 2. For the time being at least I wont get X11 but will try to work with
> the native aqua/quartz/display-pdf.
>
> 3. I'll get Gerben Wierda's teTeX. I'll probably use command line
> pdftex but I'll also try TeXShop. In addition, I will try previe-latex,
> auctex, reftex combo recoomended by a few posters.
preview-latex will not run with a terminal Emacs. And it may well be
that it may work just with X11: I do not know to what degree image
support would by now be included in the Cocoa version.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
Kai Großjohann
> I am not familar with inodes. However, I do remember that the dir size
> decreases by 16MB when I moved the files out. I played around like that
> and the disk space seemed real. Anyway, why do we need three
> executables two of which seem to do nothing?
Please use `ls -i' to show the inode numbers. If they are the same
then don't worry about the space.
`du' might produce wrong results when hardlinks are present.
You might wish to look at the output of `df' after removing the
file. That will tell you the free space on the disk, and it isn't
fooled by hardlinks.
Ajanta
> Please use `ls -i' to show the inode numbers. If they are the same
> then don't worry about the space.
Thanks. I get the following for inodes with 'ls -i':
339997 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs*
340006 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
340007 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
They are identical size (7912316).
Kai Großjohann
Ah, so they are not hard links. Hm. Bad. Try to use cmp on them to
verify that they are really the same. If they are, you can remove
all but one of them and create hard links manually. For example:
cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/
rm emacs-21.3.50
ln emacs emacs-21.3.50
rm ../../../MacOS/Emacs
ln emacs ../../../MacOS/Emacs
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
> 340006 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
> 340007 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
Bad!
Please send a bug-report (after checking with whoever made the Emacs.app
package that he followed the normal instructions).
M-x report-emacs-bug is the way to send a bug-report, BTW.
Stefan
Ajanta
Sorry, my email is messed up today. Hope this message will get to you.
1. I believe the following to be a bug. The Mac OSX version of 21.3.50
contains three executables inside Emacs.app, with different inode
numbers (thanks to Stefan Monnier):
339997 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs*
340006 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs*
340007 /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/bin/emacs-21.3.50*
They are identical size (7912316). Seems like a waste of HD space.
2. This is of course not a bug but would be a great feature if
implemented: a simple way to delete support for all unwanted languages
(don't know howm much space those things take). I for example only need
English. The best would be some sort of script that people could
configure (i.e., which languages you want to keep), and then run it to
delete the rest.
Thanks.
A
David Combs
>[Deleted the xemacs group, but keeping comp.text.tex since this whole
>exercise is TeX-related for me]
>
>Andrew Choi <akochoi...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Oh no, not again. This patch will fix it:
>>
>> Index: getopt.c
>> ===================================================================
>> RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lib-src/getopt.c,v
>> retrieving revision 1.21
>> ...
>
>Thanks. I am sure this would have helped. Fortunately I was able to get
Gnu-emacs 21.2 is as of march this year -- pretty ancient, no?
Where do you get something newer -- even beta or alpha?
(tarball, for solaris)
Thanks,
David
Ajanta
> Gnu-emacs 21.2 is as of march this year -- pretty ancient, no?
> Where do you get something newer -- even beta or alpha?
> (tarball, for solaris)
You "cvs" the source and then compile it. However, as I was able to get
pre-built binaries for mac os x, I can't help you directly.
Look at http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/ for cvs instructions. You
obviously want to ignore any mac-specific advice that might be given
there.
A
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
> implemented: a simple way to delete support for all unwanted languages
> (don't know howm much space those things take). I for example only need
The size of emacs/lisp/language is about 700KB here. Peanuts.
The amount of space used up by the other emacs/lisp/international features
(mostly support for various charsets) is less than 4MB. Not worth
the trouble.
The amount of disk space used by the various input methods (that allow
you to enter accented chars, chinese chars, ...) is about 20MB. This
used to be distributed separately in the `leim' library.
You can delete the `leim' subdirectory to recover those 20MB and I don't
think you'll suffer any consequence.
> English. The best would be some sort of script that people could
> configure (i.e., which languages you want to keep), and then run it to
> delete the rest.
HD space is not expensive enough to justify wasting any time on this.
Stefan
Ajanta
> The size of emacs/lisp/language is about 700KB here. Peanuts.
>...
> The amount of space used up by the other emacs/lisp/international features
> (mostly support for various charsets) is less than 4MB. Not worth
> the trouble.
> ...
> HD space is not expensive enough to justify wasting any time on this.
First of all, thank you for all the help. Secondly, I do have a
slightly different philosophical perspective on unneeded disk clutter,
perhaps rooted in my familarity with the third world.
You see, people in the 3rd world produce much less trash than say the
US. And their urban poor actually "recycle" most of it. Yet, without
systematic and uncompromising management, it still keeps adding up, and
their cities are living hell compared to American cities that in fact
generate a lot more garbage.
The difference is in constant sorting and processing, of even the
smallest piece of paper or plastic, shall we say of even a single
peanut shell? :)
In fact many 3rd world people show remarkably similar attitude: the
Forest/River/Beach is so big and I am just throwing one candy wrapper,
what's the big deal?
To make a long story short I believe all programs should come with
tools to minimize unnecessary clutter and also to safely and completely
uninstall themselves if asked.
A
Galen Boyer
Whew!
Can you send an encrypted phone number to your dealer? My stash
of really awesome POT is getting low.
--
Galen Boyer
Phillip Lord
Galen> On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, aja...@no.spam wrote:
>> First of all, thank you for all the help. Secondly, I do have a
>> slightly different philosophical perspective on unneeded disk
>> clutter, perhaps rooted in my familarity with the third world.
Galen> Can you send an encrypted phone number to your dealer? My
Galen> stash of really awesome POT is getting low.
Actually, it's not so daft as you might think.
I went to a conference a while back, where someone was talking about
the problems of computing in the third world. For instance, they
talked about having internet access via satellite. This sounds great,
till you realise that this means you get half an hours access a day,
when the satellite happens to be over head.
Okay, I hear you cry, why not just use copper wires? Probably cheaper
than satellite access. Well, the problem was that every time they put
up copper wires, someone with a big pair of croppers came along and
took the wire away. Copper is expensive after all. I thought I had
some ideas of the problems the third world might have, but it turns
out that most of my ideas were wrong.
At the end of the day, Stefan's point, that hard drive space is not
worth the effort saving it would entail, is true. Hard drive space is
cheap, while people are expensive. But, of course, this is only true
in some parts of the world. In many parts of the third world, its the
other way around.
Of course, emacs is not a large offender in this day and age, and
there are many worse. I current have six versions of emacs on my hard
drive, because I've not got around to deleting pretest versions.
The solution here, though, is the "scratching an itch" one. I can
understand why the emacs maintainers don't want to spend time on
it. Other might though, and they should probably be the ones to submit
patches!
Incidentally, on the pot front, you did know about M-x dealer I
presume?
Phil
Galen Boyer
[Snip of a reasonable explanation, not laden with PCP...]
I still don't understand how, if someone can buy a computer, a
little more disk space is going to kill them.
> Incidentally, on the pot front, you did know about M-x dealer I
> presume?
I didn't get any matches. Damn.
--
Galen Boyer
Phillip Lord
Galen> On 10 Dec 2002, p.l...@russet.org.uk wrote:
Galen> [Snip of a reasonable explanation, not laden with PCP...]
Galen> I still don't understand how, if someone can buy a computer,
Galen> a little more disk space is going to kill them.
You are assuming that they have bought the computer. Perhaps they go
it on a freebie. The first world gets through a lot of computers, and
many of the old ones head out to the third world. I know its hard to
believe, but there are many many people out there still using 486's.
>> Incidentally, on the pot front, you did know about M-x dealer I
>> presume?
Galen> I didn't get any matches. Damn.
M-x spark.
Also worth while is M-x bogart, if you start to cop a whitey.
Phil
Ajanta
> At the end of the day, Stefan's point, that hard drive space is not
> worth the effort saving it would entail, is true.
I didn't get my point across. The problem is not of space but clutter.
If you see some trash thrown around somewhere, it is not necessarily
occupying a large % of the space or volume. But it is still clutter,
that would add up. However, I would concede that tolerance for or
aversion to such things is probably a matter of personal taste.
> Hard drive space is cheap, while people are expensive.
Of course it would be some effort to clean up an old warehouse, but
keeping a house clean, if done regularly with good habits in the first
place, is not such a big deal. So is the case with software.
> I current have six versions of emacs on my hard drive, because I've not
> got around to deleting pretest versions.
Your life, your choice. I just picked up a toast that had fallen on the
floor. My lunch, my choice. :) But to guest or even in a soup kitchen,
I wouldn't do that. Standards are different when you are serving
others, with or without charge.
> I can understand why the emacs maintainers don't want to spend time on
> it. Other might though, and they should probably be the ones to submit
> patches!
I think it is a matter of overall awareness, and also some discipline
being imposed by the people who are in-charge.
A
Tim Vanhoof
> Maybe off topic, but IMHO pstricks is a waste of time. I had one student
> who used that for his PhD thesis on a Sun, and he spend more time
> hacking figures than on research. He is now married+2 kids+mortgage,
> and uses Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac. A tragic story or the
> other way around?
I wouldn't want to write a thesis in Photoshop.
Donald Arseneau
> Phillip Lord <p.l...@russet.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > At the end of the day, Stefan's point, that hard drive space is not
> > worth the effort saving it would entail, is true.
>
> I didn't get my point across. The problem is not of space but clutter.
Yes. And in this world, the clutter is still a problem -- not for the disk
space it occupies, but for the human time it consumes. Best to clean it
up immediately when you know what it is, rather than getting hopelessly
confused next year when you are trying to upgrade.
Donald Arseneau as...@triumf.ca
John Johnson
will say first that I could be wrong, then go ahead and attempt to stuff
my foot in my mouth. ;-)
In article <1fmul92.639t2cl202xoN%timva...@gmx.net>,
timva...@gmx.net (Tim Vanhoof) wrote:
Neither would I!
I believe that the above reference was to generating images (charts,
etc.) in Illustrator and Photoshop, saving to a suitable file
(encapsulated PostScript is one) then including those files in the
thesis (whose text is written with a suitable text-editor) and sending
the whole package through the TeX/LaTeX engine. As I recall, pstricks is
a package for generating (including?) charts/graphs in a TeX document,
but requires hand-coding (the reference to hacking figures?) the
PostScript code.
Later.
David Kastrup
> As I recall, pstricks is a package for generating (including?)
> charts/graphs in a TeX document, but requires hand-coding (the
> reference to hacking figures?) the PostScript code.
Uh, utter and complete nonsense. PStricks is a way to generate
PostScript specials with a lot of functionality by calling
comparatively simple macros. The whole point of it is to let the
user avoid having to hand-code stuff that can be done in that way.
In some rare cases (such as function plots drawn with an actual
function instead of a list of data points) there are possibilities to
wedge PostScript code in where it makes sense, but 97% of all
PStricks _user_ experience does not involve PostScript.
Phillip Lord
Ajanta> Phillip Lord <p.l...@russet.org.uk> wrote:
>> At the end of the day, Stefan's point, that hard drive space is
>> not worth the effort saving it would entail, is true.
Ajanta> I didn't get my point across. The problem is not of space
Ajanta> but clutter. If you see some trash thrown around somewhere,
Ajanta> it is not necessarily occupying a large % of the space or
Ajanta> volume. But it is still clutter, that would add up. However,
Ajanta> I would concede that tolerance for or aversion to such
Ajanta> things is probably a matter of personal taste.
Well this is a different issue. Clutter for me is a problem in user
space. I keep my home space relatively clean, because otherwise its
hard to use. I am rigorous about avoiding duplication of all sorts,
because otherwise I make mistakes.
In space managed my the machine (like for instance a make file
installed emacs), I couldn't care less about duplication, or
clutter. Computers don't get confused by clutter.
Phil
Ajanta
> Well this is a different issue. Clutter for me is a problem in user
> space... In space managed my the machine (like for instance a make
> file installed emacs), I couldn't care less about duplication, or
> clutter. Computers don't get confused by clutter.
However, since computers are there for users, there is bound to be some
overlap. One might want to know just what commands are there in one's
various bin's, what they do, who put them there and why. In tricky
situations the only way to understand a program better may be to
actuallly browse its directories and files, so clutter there would
hurt.
You are talking about the visible "living room" clutter. But there is a
different kind of clutter too:
You go to a closet to pick up a tool but that place is a mess with
hundreds of scattered functioning and non-functioning gadgets, some for
110 V, others for 220 V. When you browse your shelves for information
you see a jungle of papers in 47 languages, 46 of which make no sense
to you. Etc.
Why? Every worker who comes to do something is in the habit of
demanding your master key and rearranging your shelves and closets,
throwing out and putting in whatever he wants, and then just leaving.
You don't know what the heck went on and he doesn't have time or
inclination to bother informing you.
A
Phillip Lord
Ajanta> Phillip Lord <p.l...@russet.org.uk> wrote:
>> Well this is a different issue. Clutter for me is a problem in
>> user space... In space managed my the machine (like for instance
>> a make file installed emacs), I couldn't care less about
>> duplication, or clutter. Computers don't get confused by clutter.
Ajanta> However, since computers are there for users, there is bound
Ajanta> to be some overlap. One might want to know just what
Ajanta> commands are there in one's various bin's, what they do, who
Ajanta> put them there and why. In tricky situations the only way to
Ajanta> understand a program better may be to actuallly browse its
Ajanta> directories and files, so clutter there would hurt.
Of course this is true. But there are some parts of my computer that I
look at, and some that I don't. The internals of an installed emacs, I
don't. Its much more important that the Makefile, or the autoconf
script, or what ever, is uncluttered than the final file system is. If
you have to put in a lot of stuff, removing the excess files, then you
are trading one for the other.
You win somethings, you loose others.
Phil
Ajanta
> Its much more important that the Makefile, or the autoconf
> script, or what ever, is uncluttered than the final file system is. If
> you have to put in a lot of stuff, removing the excess files, then you
> are trading one for the other.
Actually I don't understand this equivalence. Makefiles routinely come
with targets like "clean" which presumably deletes files like .log/.o
and of course "install". If they could have a few extra targets, like
"superclean" or "EnglishOnly", that's a few extra lines. Why is that
comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of files scattered
around? If you can have "make install", why not "make uninstall" which
would merely remove all the installed files and links?
A
Henrik Enberg
> Makefiles routinely come with targets like "clean" which presumably
> deletes files like .log/.o and of course "install". If they could
> have a few extra targets, like "superclean" or "EnglishOnly", that's a
> few extra lines.
There are dependencies in the source code and the manuals. Simply
removing the files is not a very pretty thing to do.
> Why is that comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of
> files scattered around? If you can have "make install", why not "make
> uninstall" which would merely remove all the installed files and
> links?
The Emacs Makefiles are created by a configure script. If any part of
the config changes, It isn't the same Makefile. You might remove the
wrong files then, unless you keep the unpacked and compiled tarball
around.
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
And "FrenchOnly" and "GermanOnly" and "EnglishAndFrenchOnly" and
"ChineseAndEnglishOnly" and ... ?
Or are you going to claim that we should not care about non-English users ?
> Why is that comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of files
> scattered around?
Could you expand on your "scattered around" ?
As maintainers, it's in our own interest to keep things uncluttered,
so we strive to find some logic to things such that we can organize our
files and keep files in their logical place. So please explain which files
or functions you think are "scattered around" and where they should
be instead ?
I don't claim that the current arrangement is perfect, but it takes time
and energy to think about how to make it better and to fix the various
places where things aren't consistent and logical, so help is most welcome.
Stefan
Kai Großjohann
> Actually I don't understand this equivalence. Makefiles routinely come
> with targets like "clean" which presumably deletes files like .log/.o
> and of course "install". If they could have a few extra targets, like
> "superclean" or "EnglishOnly", that's a few extra lines. Why is that
> comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of files scattered
> around?
Writing these few extra lines is a LOT of work.
Most important of all, it's not clear what to delete. There would be
*endless* arguments about which files to remove and which files to
keep. Emacs consists of 2297 files (on my system), it's very
difficult to untangle dependencies on them.
Let me give a simple example: some Linux distributions normally
install the *.elc files only and put the *.el files into an extra
package (*.rpm in the case of SuSE and Redhat), because the *.el files
are not needed for running Emacs. (*.el files contain the source
code, and *.elc files are something like `object code' that's created
by `compiling' the *.el files.)
Then the ask how to send mail, and I tell them to type M-x
finder-commentary RET smtpmail RET. This command prints some
documentation which is extracted from the beginning of the file
smtpmail.el.
But they don't have that file installed!
So, even the simple idea of `people don't want to look at the source
code, people just want to run the resulting binary' has failed!
(In an ideal world, there would be additional documentation for
smtpmail, outside the .el file. But the world is not perfect, and
the documentation you get with M-x finder-commentary RET smtpmail RET
is quite adequate for setting it up, so nobody has ever bothered to
do anything about it.)
That said, XEmacs has the so-called package system which is a very
nifty thing indeed. You install a base package of XEmacs which can
do almost nothing at all, and then you start installing XEmacs
packages which contain the Lisp code for various things. It's very
easy this way to upgrade the packages that you have installed.
But then, a lot of XEmacs users install the Sumo tarball I think
which just contains all available packages :-) (Caveat: I'm not an
XEmacs user, so what do I know what `a lot of XEmacs users' do!)
Bijan Soleymani
> Actually I don't understand this equivalence. Makefiles routinely come
> with targets like "clean" which presumably deletes files like .log/.o
> and of course "install". If they could have a few extra targets, like
> "superclean" or "EnglishOnly", that's a few extra lines. Why is that
> comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of files scattered
> around? If you can have "make install", why not "make uninstall" which
> would merely remove all the installed files and links?
>
Most software I compile nowadays has a "make uninstall".
Also usually there is a distclean option that cleans very well.
As for the others most options belong in the configure step
like --without-this --with-that.
Bijan
Ajanta
> > "EnglishOnly"
> And "FrenchOnly" and "GermanOnly" and "EnglishAndFrenchOnly" and
> "ChineseAndEnglishOnly" and ... ?
> Or are you going to claim that we should not care about non-English users ?
Well, there are *hundreds* of langauges in the world: which one would
you not want to "care" about? Sooner or later "internationalization"
has got to mean not just *adding* things but also *selecting* them.
Maybe this should be done at configure stage, via options, or
interactively, oe some other way. It is for the programmers to figure
out the best way, but the time to start thinking about it is now.
> > Why is that comparable with the clutter of tens of MB and 100's of files
> > scattered around?
>
> Could you expand on your "scattered around" ?
I didn't keep a tally but here is an example. I recently I obtained a
beta distribution (not emacs) which didn't work out (fair enough,
that's a known risk in beta) and I deleted it. Or so I thought. I still
keep running into some files from it. What gives me pause is that these
are the ones I recognize because of the way they are named. There are
many whose names mean nothing to me, I don't know which program they
belong to, so they'll lie around. (At first, I did take a shot in the
dark and tried "make uninstall", but it didn't work.)
As I mentioned in the beginning post of this thread, the distribution
of Emacs 21.3.50 that I got for Mac OSX has *three* executables of
identical size but different inodes. This makes no sense at all.
A
Anil Trivedi
> As maintainers, it's in our own interest to keep things uncluttered,
> so we strive to find some logic to things such that we can organize our
> files and keep files in their logical place...I don't claim that the current
> arrangement is perfect, but it takes time and energy to think about how
> to make it better and to fix the various places where things aren't
> consistent and logical, so help is most welcome.
Kai Großjohann wrote:
> Writing these few extra lines is a LOT of work. Most important of all, it's
> not clear what to delete. There would be *endless* arguments about which
> files to remove and which files to keep. Emacs consists of 2297 files (on
> my system), it's very difficult to untangle dependencies on them.
I would like to offer a few general suggestions for any large program,
not just emacs.
First of all, you should have a clear idea as to which files are needed
to complie the program but not to run it later, and which ones will be
needed forever to run the program. It is a sorry state of affairs if
the creators and maintainers themselves don't know the "dpendencies";
that indicates serious future troubles and the sooner one starts
correcting the situation the better.
1. You need "clean" and "distclean" to recover from failed compile
attempts. I think most programs do have this. (Personally, I might just
re-open the .tar file and start over.)
2. Once the program compiles, and works fine, the user should be able
to delete all files that were needed in compiling but will not be
needed in running it, or in uninstalling it.
3. Finally, should the user decide that this is not his kind of progam,
there should be an uninstall option that does safely and cleanly remove
everything. He should not have to go around checking in various bin,
share, libexec, man, lib, doc directories, etc., and guessing just
which files might belong to the program he wants to delete.
This seeme to be a minimum framework for responsible software
distribution.
4. As for languages, this is an early stage in globalization and the
"bloat" is perhaps manageable, but in a few years we may see support
for hundreds of languages and dozens of scripts. We would need to
enable a user to select what he needs and skip the rest.
Anil Trivedi
Kai Großjohann
> I didn't keep a tally but here is an example. I recently I obtained a
> beta distribution (not emacs) which didn't work out (fair enough,
> that's a known risk in beta) and I deleted it. Or so I thought.
I run Linux instead of MacOS, but maybe this approach works there,
too?
At our site, we have a directory for software with subdirs for each
program, and subsubdirs for each version. For example,
./configure --prefix=/usr/sw/emacs/21.2
is sufficient to configure Emacs in such a way that subsequent `make'
and `make install' can be undone easily by just removing the
directory /usr/sw/emacs/21.2. This works because Emacs is the only
program in that directory.
It's a very simple approach, but it works well enough for us.
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
>> > scattered around?
>> Could you expand on your "scattered around" ?
> I didn't keep a tally but here is an example. I recently I obtained a
> beta distribution (not emacs) which didn't work out (fair enough,
> that's a known risk in beta) and I deleted it. Or so I thought. I still
> keep running into some files from it. What gives me pause is that these
Do you have anything concrete like filenames so we might be able
to do something about it or at least explain why things are the
way they are ?
> As I mentioned in the beginning post of this thread, the distribution
> of Emacs 21.3.50 that I got for Mac OSX has *three* executables of
All under the single `Emacs.app' directory. Seems clean enough to me.
Stefan
PS: I'm not quite sure what you want w.r.t the non-english language support.
Do you also consider it as clutter ? If so how and why ?
Phillip Lord
Anil> Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> As maintainers, it's in our own interest to keep things
>> uncluttered, so we strive to find some logic to things such that
>> we can organize our files and keep files in their logical
>> place...I don't claim that the current arrangement is perfect,
>> but it takes time and energy to think about how to make it better
>> and to fix the various places where things aren't consistent and
>> logical, so help is most welcome.
Anil> Kai Gro_johann wrote:
>> Writing these few extra lines is a LOT of work. Most important of
>> all, it's not clear what to delete. There would be *endless*
>> arguments about which files to remove and which files to keep.
>> Emacs consists of 2297 files (on my system), it's very difficult
>> to untangle dependencies on them.
Anil> 2. Once the program compiles, and works fine, the user should
Anil> be able
Anil> to delete all files that were needed in compiling but will not
Anil> be needed in running it, or in uninstalling it.
I think Kai's example showed the problem with this.
Personally I find an emacs without the .el files half baked. The
reason for this is that I read the .el source as a form of
documentation. Clearly this makes me a specialist user, but none the
less a user. Similarly the hyper links in command documentation will
not work with source, as there is no source to jump to.
The M-x finder-commentary example shows that even non programming
users may need the source to get all the functionality that they
require. Of course it would be possible to ensure that the commentary
was copied into the .elc file, or alternatively, it could be cut out,
and kept, so that you could still view it even when the .el files were
gone.
The core problem is that the Emacs is a lisp interpreter. The
distinction between "files required for compiling" and "files required
for running" is not clear with lisp as it is with C, for instance. My
own feeling is that binary distributions of emacs should always
include .el files, but not the C source for the lisp
interpreter. Which is what Emacs's own makefile installs.
Phil
Bijan Soleymani
> At our site, we have a directory for software with subdirs for each
> program, and subsubdirs for each version. For example,
>
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/sw/emacs/21.2
>
> is sufficient to configure Emacs in such a way that subsequent `make'
> and `make install' can be undone easily by just removing the
> directory /usr/sw/emacs/21.2. This works because Emacs is the only
> program in that directory.
>
> It's a very simple approach, but it works well enough for us.
>
> --
In that case you might want to check out GNU stow. You put all your
software in a stow directory /usr/local/stow/ or /usr/sw/ one program
per subdirectory. Then when you run stow it makes symlinks in
/usr/local/. This way you can even do this sort of thing with
libraries or programs you would like to have in your path.
Bijan
Ajanta
> In that case you might want to check out GNU stow. You put all your
> software in a stow directory /usr/local/stow/ or /usr/sw/ one program
> per subdirectory. Then when you run stow it makes symlinks in
> /usr/local/. This way you can even do this sort of thing with
> libraries or programs you would like to have in your path.
I wasn't aware of this and will have to look into it. However, unless a
program's creators cooperate, I can't visualize how stow would prevent
a program from installing files all over the place leaving you with no
way to uninstall?
A practical problem is that except perhaps to an insider most names are
unintuitive. If a file is named emacs-foo or foo.el you can guess what
it is but a name like zuplibfoo (this is hypothetical, but most unix
names have similar transparency) doesn't tell you which of the hundreds
of packages it might belong to. So you can't even try to uninstall
everything manually.
A
Kai Großjohann
>>>>>> "Anil" == Anil Trivedi <an...@null.invalid> writes:
>
> Anil> 2. Once the program compiles, and works fine, the user should
> Anil> be able
> Anil> to delete all files that were needed in compiling but will not
> Anil> be needed in running it, or in uninstalling it.
>
> I think Kai's example showed the problem with this.
Note that we might be talking cross purposes. (Is that the right
idiom?)
If people download emacs-*.tar.gz, unpack it into, say /tmp/src, then
./configure --prefix=/usr/local; make; make install, then surely
afterwards /tmp/src can be deleted without any ill effects.
This has been said previously in this thread. It might be what Anil
is referring to, I'm not sure.
The *.el and *.elc files installed in /usr/local are a different
beast entirely. It's not good to delete the *.el files there -- we
agree on that.
Kai Großjohann
> In that case you might want to check out GNU stow. You put all your
> software in a stow directory /usr/local/stow/ or /usr/sw/ one program
> per subdirectory. Then when you run stow it makes symlinks in
> /usr/local/. This way you can even do this sort of thing with
> libraries or programs you would like to have in your path.
I don't use Stow, but I think it's not a (complete) solution. We have
several versions of Java installed in /usr/sw/java, and some people
need one version whereas other people need another version (on the
same machine).
I'm thinking about making a directory /usr/sw/bin and populating it
with symlinks, but currently, we don't have enough software packages
to justify this effort. (Happily, Debian provides lots of packages
so we don't have to install too many of them.)
Ajanta
> Do you have anything concrete like filenames so we might be able
> to do something about it or at least explain why things are the
> way they are ?
Obviously, I have failed to express myself. As you said, emacs has
close to 3,000 files. If I install ten similarly large packages, that
is 30,000 files. I don't want to get to know them personally. What I
want is to be able to install and uninstall such packages cleanly and
safely.
> > As I mentioned in the beginning post of this thread, the distribution
> > of Emacs 21.3.50 that I got for Mac OSX has *three* executables of
>
> All under the single `Emacs.app' directory. Seems clean enough to me.
I mentioned that as a different kind of bug: 3 files where 1 is needed,
16 MB of wasted space.
> PS: I'm not quite sure what you want w.r.t the non-english language support.
> Do you also consider it as clutter? If so how and why ?
At present the languages number in 10's but soon it may be 100's. I am
glad they are included. It is not clutter in the *distribution*, but it
becomes clutter in my *system* if I am stuck with it all with no tools
to safely select *my* language(s).
An analogy might be to ship a fat distribution with binaries for every
cpu architecture and OS, and expect a user to keep everything because
it is a lot of work to separate them. That would be stupid. IMHO it
would be equally stupid to force people to keep 100's of languages they
have no prayer of learning/understanding/needing in one lifetime.
A
Anil Trivedi
> I'm thinking about making a directory /usr/sw/bin and populating it
> with symlinks, but currently, we don't have enough software packages
> to justify this effort. (Happily, Debian provides lots of packages
> so we don't have to install too many of them.)
This is not the most deeply probing question, but is /usr/sw simply
your personal preference or is there a good reason for avoiding the
more traditional name /usr/local ? (I am curious because I just started
installing a few programs and have been putting them in /usr/local).
Anil
Since unix routinely keeps a system-wide log on every file, I am
wondering if it would be desirable to extend that a little.
Let us say a slightly enhanced version of "ls" could tell you not only
that a file is owned by root, wheel, etc., but also "belongs" to the
System or a user or a package like TeX or Emacs-29.9, and maybe even
its type within that package (src, doc, bin...). This requires one or
two more file attributes, but then you could check on an individual
file with "ls" or list all files belonging to a package with "find".
I think unix was conceptualized for small systems and programs, where a
user might know every file, where it came from, what it does. Either
you wrote it yourself or copied it from a friend. Those times are gone.
We have hundreds of thousands of files, know nothing about them, and
routinely install packages that bring thousands of files. The culture
and the tools have not evolved to deal with this reality and perhaps
need to.
Shouldn't you be able to know just what a particular file named
"dtabttf" doing on your system? Similarly, while I am glad to know a
files's relationship to "wheel", it would also be useful to know it
belongs to emacs or TeX.
Anil Trivedi
Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>
the focus from one issue to another. For example you say:
> Obviously, I have failed to express myself. As you said, emacs has
> close to 3,000 files. If I install ten similarly large packages, that
> is 30,000 files. I don't want to get to know them personally. What I
> want is to be able to install and uninstall such packages cleanly and
> safely.
Which I addressed with:
>> All under the single `Emacs.app' directory. Seems clean enough to me.
But then you replied by shifting to yet-another point:
> I mentioned that as a different kind of bug: 3 files where 1 is needed,
> 16 MB of wasted space.
As for:
> At present the languages number in 10's but soon it may be 100's. I am
> glad they are included. It is not clutter in the *distribution*, but it
> becomes clutter in my *system* if I am stuck with it all with no tools
> to safely select *my* language(s).
What's clutterish about them ? Have you bothered to take a look
at the lisp/languages directory I mentioned earlier ?
Why does this support for other languages bother you, whereas support
for TPU-emulation, RMail, Simula, etc... doesn't ? Do you intend to learn
Simula ?
> An analogy might be to ship a fat distribution with binaries for every
> cpu architecture and OS, and expect a user to keep everything because
> it is a lot of work to separate them. That would be stupid. IMHO it
> would be equally stupid to force people to keep 100's of languages they
> have no prayer of learning/understanding/needing in one lifetime.
I can see it as waste, but I still completely fail to see what's clutterish
about it. The only thing I understand is that you have no clue where
to find what in all those files. Whether that's bad or not depends on how
much effort you've put into it.
Stefan
Galen Boyer
> Obviously, I have failed to express myself. As you said, emacs
> has close to 3,000 files. If I install ten similarly large
> packages, that is 30,000 files. I don't want to get to know
> them personally. What I want is to be able to install and
> uninstall such packages cleanly and safely.
Why can't you just remove the entire directory structure? The
files aren't scattered everywhere. Install into its own
directory structure and you know where all the files are.
--
Galen Boyer
Anil Trivedi
> glad they are included. It is not clutter in the *distribution*, but it
> becomes clutter in my *system* if I am stuck with it all with no tools
> to safely select *my* language(s).
>
> An analogy might be to ship a fat distribution with binaries for every
> cpu architecture and OS, and expect a user to keep everything because
> it is a lot of work to separate them. That would be stupid. IMHO it
> would be equally stupid to force people to keep 100's of languages they
> have no prayer of learning/understanding/needing in one lifetime.
I just wrote this elsewhere in another context (file attributes) but
once more will do no harm:
Unix was conceptualized for small systems and programs, where a user
might know every file, and actually need it. Indeed, he either wrote it
himself or copied from a friend he knew, and it was all in one
language, whatever it happened to be.
Now we have hundreds of thousands of files, know nothing about them,
and routinely install packages that bring thousands of files and
support more languages than the United Nations! All well and good, but
as the system grows, the culture and the tools need to keep up too.
Anil Trivedi
Anil Trivedi
> Anil> 2. Once the program compiles, and works fine, the user should
> Anil> be able to delete all files that were needed in compiling but will not
> Anil> be needed in running it, or in uninstalling it.
>
> I think Kai's example showed the problem with this...
> Personally I find an emacs without the .el files half baked...
> The core problem is that the Emacs is a lisp interpreter...
There is no problem here. If it is desirable to keep .el files in
Emacs, let us by all means keep them. Make them unremovable and have
the program issue a stern lecture and warning to anyone who tries to
override the protection!
That is however no reason to no provide tools to delete unneeded files,
in emacs or in hundreds of other programs.
Let me add the following philosophical plug that I have been pushing
today: Unix was conceptualized for small systems and programs, where a
user needed and knew every file, where it came from, what it does.
Either he wrote it himself or copied it from a friend. Those times are
gone. We have hundreds of thousands of files, know nothing about them,
and routinely install packages that bring thousands of files. The
culture and the tools have not evolved to deal with this reality and
perhaps need to.
Anil Trivedi
Anil Trivedi
> I fail like I can't have a rational argument because you keep shifting
> the focus from one issue to another.
But several issues *have* been raised here: (1) Don't waste disk space,
(2) Enable users to safely delete either the functionality or files
they know they don't need, (3) And include a complete uninstall script.
Clutter is less of a problem if a complete uninstall option is there,
but it is a major problem if users have to rely on their own wits to
locate and delete the files.
> >> All under the single `Emacs.app' directory. Seems clean enough to me.
Stefan, looks like we have both been working all night and need a very,
very strong cup of coffee. :-) Rubbing my eyes, this is what I see on
my system:
anil% find /usr -name emacs -print
/usr/bin/emacs
/usr/info/emacs
/usr/libexec/emacs
/usr/local/bin/emacs
/usr/share/emacs
/usr/share/info/emacs
I only searched for the *name* emacs, there may or may not be other
emacs-ralated files and directories with different names. I love emacs
but if someone didn't want to keep it, should they just delete /usr?!
> Why does this support for other languages bother you, whereas
> support for TPU-emulation, RMail, Simula, etc... doesn't? Do you intend
> to learn Simula?
When you don't need such things and they are taking more than minimal
disk space, you should be abe to delete them too.
However, human languages are fundamentally different. There is zero
chance that every major program will include a newsreader or TPU or
Simula. It is a near 100% certainty that every major program will
increasingly come with support for a large number of human languages.
If I accumulate 100 programs and there are 100 supported langaues I
don't understand, that would be 10,000 instances of language support I
don't need and can't use. I don't expect to have that kind of problem
with Gnus, Rmail, or Simula.
Anil Trivedi