CMacTeX

Updated: 7/4/2002

From his web site:

CMacTeX is an integrated suite of programs for implementing TeX on the Macintosh. It includes both Carbon and Classic versions of the programs. The Carbon programs require at least Mac OS 8.6 and CarbonLib 1.0.4 and run natively on Mac OS X. The Classic programs require at least Mac OS 8.1. CMacTeX can be configured to work in an integrated fashion with either of the popular Macintosh editors BBEdit or Alpha. It is compatible with the version of TeX found on most Unix systems and can even interpret any Unix directory paths that may be embedded in documents originally written on a Unix system.

iTeXMac

Free-ware under vague licensing.

iTeXMac is also a very nice (and native) implementation of TeX on Mac OS X. It was written after a disagreement between the author of TeXShop and the author of iTeXMac disagreed on the direction/features of TeXShop (the original OS X Cocoa editor). I count this as a win for diversity!(JS) Interestingly enough, Jerome made the icon for TeXShop. It uses Gerben Wierda's teTeX distribution, or alternatively can use teTeX from fink.

From the author:

iTeXMac is at the same time a text editor, a PDF viewer and a teTeX front-end. It allows to produce very high quality documents using TeX typesetting system.

However iTeXMac can handle quite any encoding while TeXShop just knows about Mac and iso8859-1. So if you are a central European, iTeXMac is for you.

Editor's note: iTeXMac is like TeXShop on steroids. This is good or bad depending on your perspective. As a gross oversimplification, TeXShop can do anything you need it to do, while iTeXMac can do most anything you want it to do. This comes at the expense of complexity, and some bugs. It's hard to argue with Jerome who says "Why not have both?".

OzTeX

Updated: 7/22/2002

OzTeX is a Macintosh implementation of Donald Knuth's TeX typesetting system. Probably the most famous share-ware implementation of TeX on the Mac.

ScientificAssistant

ScientificAssistant is from Advanced Science Corporation and it claims to allow you to create "stunning documents" without having to know TeX or LaTeX. I have not had the time to try it out, but I would love to hear from anyone who has. Here is some info from their web site:

ScientificAssistant is a Document Management and Scientific Word processing System for MacOS X. The application offers natural editing of mathematics, professional typesetting (LaTeX) and database storage. ScientificAssistant has been built from the ground-up with scientists in mind, that need to create, manage and publish documents with formula intensive contents very efficiently and allows both professional and occasional authors to create stunning documents and whole books quickly and easily, without having to know TeX or LaTeX.

TeXShop

Free-ware under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

TeXShop is a very nice (and native) implementation of TeX on Mac OS X. I (Gary) have been using it since I installed Mac OS X on April 24, 2001 and it is really growing on me. Getting up and running is a snap with the teTeX installer from Gerben Wierda. From the author:

TeXShop is a TeX previewer for Mac OS X, written in Cocoa. Since PDF is a native file format on OS X, TeXShop uses "pdftex" and "pdflatex" rather than "tex" and "latex" to typeset; these programs in the standard teTeX distribution of TeX produce PDF output instead of DVI output.

It uses Gerben Wierda's teTeX distribution, or alternatively can use teTeX from fink.

TeX Tools

Free-ware, with donations requested/accepted.

MacGhostView
From the author:

MacGhostView is a general purpose Postscript and PDF previewer for the Macintosh. It is quite similar to the ghostview program found on Unix machines and is based on ghostscript 7.05. If a Postscript document conforms to Adobe's Document Structuring Conventions, the pages of the document can be displayed in any order. The program includes installation and registration instructions. MacGhostView is shareware with a one-time $20(US) registration fee. You can pay online with a credit card through PayPal or Kagi Shareware. See the file register.readme for further details.

MacDviX
From the author: MacDviX is special version of macdvi which integrates easily with teTeX. MacDviX uses the teTeX texmf tree to load tfm and vf files and uses the teTeX program mktexpk to generate missing pk fonts. It will automatically update the preview of an opened dvi file if that file is changed by another program.

TeXShell
From the author: All of the programs discussed on this page require a complete teTeX/TeXLive installation in OS X. If you have installed teTeX and ghostscript in OS X you already have all of the tools you need for a complete TeX installation except for DVI and postscript previewers. You do not have to modify your teTeX or ghostscript installation in any way in order to use these programs.

BBEdit plug-ins for teTeX
From the author: If you want to use BBEdit Lite as a text editor with teTeX I have written a suite of BBEdit plug-ins that allow you to run TeX, PDF-TeX, dvips, ps2pdf, etc, from BBEdit Lite. These plug-ins are similar to the BBEdit plug-ins I have provided for CMacTeX.