I have updated StuffIt Expander to the new StuffIt Lite 6.5 package. You can find it at the top of the Main/News Page.

This is an updated version of Gianluca Gorni's LaTeX glossary for BBEdit. Version 3.0.1 fixes a bug in the "32)TeXchars2Mac" Apple Script. Please see the news from Thursday, August 23, 2001 for additional details.

You download it in the LaTeXMenu Section of the Tools Page.

AlphaTcl 7.5a2

This is the 2nd alpha release of AlphaTcl 7.5. It can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5a2

• improvements to filesetsMenu handling of filesets which throw errors.
• small Alphatk fix to dialogsNew.tcl.
• fix to url downloading from lists.
• added M2-mode from Andreas. Significant modifications so it works with AlphaTcl and so it doesn't load everything at startup. Also bunch of changes so it has a chance of working with Alphatk and AlphaX.
• fixed problem with dialog::describe (thanks for err info report)
• updated bibToHtml
• fix to dialog storage issue introduced in 7.5a1; fixes setting of package preferences, amongst other problems.
• fix to odbEditor.tcl
• fix to temporary filters file name on non-MacOS platforms.
• Setx mode menu bindings are now mode-dependent.
• added proper support for encodings to AlphaTcl for use by Alpha 8 & Tk
• better installer building in alphaDeveloperMenu, installer now uses macRoman encoding properly (on all platforms).
• no need to call 'mode::updateSuffixes' after addMode, since addMode will now ensure the suffix list is correct (This should also speed up startup, since calling mode::updateSuffixes is not very fast).
• fixed some Alphatk and windows-specific issues with manipCols.
• converted some uses of 'insertColorEscape' to 'text::color' for better Alphatk compatibility.
• more fixes to M2 mode. In the process of fixing M2 mode, encountered a variety of subtleties in AlphaTcl and Alphatk's approaches to initialising modes, changing modes, creating new windows which have been fixed. This should mean AlphaTcl is now more robust to creatively written modes. Part of this process was to add the 'loadAMode' proc to alphaHooks.tcl.
• changeMode now throws an error if an attempt is made to changeMode while another changeMode is in progress. Before no error was thrown but various global preferences could get unset. Now at least the problem will not impact AlphaTcl's core, only the strangely written code which is attempting that.
• potentially fixed problem with 'rm' not removing '.' files.
• lots of fixes from Craig; also updated wwwMenu declaration, splitting it into a mode and menu, which is more robust.
• removed 'bind::continueComment' binding and replaced it with the opposite (as per Craig's email).
• added support to latex mode for additional flags in typeset (so you can add '--src' for MikTeX).
• improved electricSemi
• mentioned avoiding commands with '.' in "Extending Alpha"
• some macros fixes.

Advanced Science Corporation is releasing new versions of ScientificAssistant at a breakneck pace. The information on their web site and the installer says that the latest version is 0.3.5, but the release notes only mention 0.3.4. Here is the info from their release notes as to what is new in 0.3.4:

• Simplified and improved installation procedure
• The Unicode - LaTeX mapping has been extended to support more characters
• The documentation has been updated
• Formulas? Not yet, but very soon (MathML, LaTeX,...).

You can find more information about ScientificAssistant and links to download it in the ScientificAssistant Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page.

AlphaTcl 7.5a1

This is the 1st alpha release of AlphaTcl 7.5. It can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5a1

• transition to first alpha release. Bug fixes only will be applied to AlphaTcl until the final release of this development cycle. note: some old/obsolete packages or files may be removed from this distribution before 7.5 final.
• small fix to file::pathStartsWith (mostly relevant to Alpha 8)
• improved handling of 'pdflatex' with .dtx files. Updated New Dialogs documentation.
• improved procs::debug and procedures to jump to correct errorInfo location.
• added explanation of -dnd to New Dialogs documentation.
• updated WWW menu from Craig (made it use the 'temp' package instead of accessing PREFS directly), fixed various menu building issues and made sure bindings are mode-dependent.
• Moved comments and paragraphs code into the core.
• Lots of small fixes to filtersMenu for Alphatk -- most operations should now work.
• bunch of fixes to supersearch's 'performSearch'.
• upgrade to metafont mode 2.0.2, replaced some 'goto 0' with 'goto [minPos]', esp in mf, filters, and some other obsolete procs (add/remove arrDef, etc). Fixed lots of uses of 'search ... 0' and other pos abuses --- latex, elec menu, html mode, fortran, etc.
• couple of fixes to newDialog.tcl code due to the re-entrancy changes (thanks Dominique)
• moved some stuff to new 'Developer' folder.
• small fix to comment paragraph filling at beginning of file.
• fixed small problem in coreFixes.tcl

AlphaTcl 7.5d28

• fix in copyRing.
• much improved file::tryToFindInFolder
• improved file::decompress and install::fromRemoteUrl to cope with .tgz, .tar (at least on Alphatk).
• added url::getAFile similar to url::download, but will look inside directories for a file, and used by the installer. Also added some intelligence so if we download a directory listing that may get treated as a directory.
• fix to defaultSize procedure to do what its name says.
• improved and fixed getEnvironment in latex mode (thanks Chris)
• fixed small bug in Tcl::FindEntireFunctionDeclaration
• improved quote::Prettify
• added new dialog::make implementation from Lars Hellstrom -- a big improvement for anything which uses it (e.g. edit filesets). Also modified the old and new code so everything is entirely re-entrant and all intermediate values are stored in a unique array for each dialog. Removed obsolete code from filesets and made vcsCore use the new dialogs correctly. The dialogsNew.dtx and documentation needs to be updated for these changes. Note these changes mean the global array 'dialog::_modified' is not used any more.
• improvements to Alpha 8/tk support of dnd, set... etc.
• added shell for 'file mtime name val' support, but need to fill in an appleevent implementation.
• improved the 'build distribution' dialog using newly added 'date' dialog type.
• improved Tcl mode's debug/apply changes functionality, esp in dump error info traces.

OzTeX 5.0b2

OzTeX has been Carbonized so that it now runs on Mac OS 8.6 and later (with CarbonLib installed). No new features have been added, so the functionality should be the same as in OzTeX 4.1b3.

Changes to OzTeX 5.0b1

• Fixed a bug that prevented the Oz* apps running on OS 8.6.
• Fixed a bug printing DVI files on non-PostScript printers under OS 8/9.
• Fixed a print dialog bug that resulted in missing pages if the "From" page wasn't 1.
• Added some code that should avoid weird printing problems if you used OzTeX 5.0 without ever selecting Page Setup.
• Fixed a very nasty bug that could cause TeX to crash if you had lots of paths in input_folders or tfm_folders. (This bug has been lurking for a very long time! The paths were being copied into TeX's string pool without any overflow checks. I no longer store paths in the string pool, so people who use lots of paths shouldn't need to increase TeX's pool_size parameter.)
• Made some changes that should avoid problems with OzTeX calling OzMF.
• Fixed a bug finding a file selected from one of OzTeX's submenus. The bug only occurred if the file was not on the same disk as OzTeX.
• Fixed a config file loading bug that caused incorrect warnings saying "No subfolders in this folder" for full paths like "Disk:Folder:*". The bug only occurred if the folder was not on the same disk as OzTeX.
• Loading config files is much faster, especially if they contain entries like "input_folders = ... hundreds of paths ... $c".
• When running under OS X (or later) all Oz* apps now check if a config file called LocalX exists; if it does then it is loaded after Local. This is very handy if you need to run OzTeX on OS 8/9 and X. For example, my LocalX file contains these lines:
• current_app = Oz* text_editor = R*ch (use BBEdit Lite on OS X)
• current_app = OzTtH html_browser = MSIE (use Internet Explorer on OS X)
• Cancelling any open file dialog now sets the current folder. This is how OzTeX used to behave; it makes it easier to run INITEX in a particular folder.
• Multiple file selection in an open file dialog is no longer allowed. The Oz* apps only ever process one file (except when the "Do all files" button is present and clicked), so being able to select more than one file was just confusing.
• The warning dialog only has an OK button instead of Cancel and Continue. You can however hit escape or command-dot to cancel the dialog and interrupt the current task (if one is in progress). In a few cases where the warning dialog asked a question you'll now get a new dialog with Yes and No buttons.

You can find additional information regarding this new version of OzTeX, links to download it, as well as links to the OzTeX web site on

• the OzTeX Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page.
• the OzTeX Section of the Mac OS 8/9 Versions Page.

ScientificAssistant 0.3.3

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 a blurb from their web site:

"ScientificAssistant is a Document Management and Scientific Wordprocessing 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."

teTeX and FrontBase are required for ScientificAssistant to work properly. The teTeX installation appears to be that of Gerben Wierda, which is identical to that for TeXShop and for CMacTeX. Therefore, you can run all three side-by-side with one teTeX. :-)

The information on their web site and the installer says that this is version 0.3.3, but the release notes only mention 0.3.2. Here is the info from their release notes:

• The Unicode - LaTeX mapping has been extended to support more characters
• The documentation has been updated
• Formulas? Not yet, but very soon (MathML, LaTeX,...).

You can find more information about ScientificAssistant and links to download it in the ScientificAssistant Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page.

This is certainly good news. We now have one more choice (of two new choices) for running TeX under OS X. Andrew says: "All Oz* apps have been Carbonized and will run natively on OS X. They should also run on OS 8.6/9.* if CarbonLib 1.3 or later is installed. I haven't added any new features so the functionality is much the same as in OzTeX 4.1b3."

In addition, he also requests the following:

I've tested the new Oz* apps quite a lot on OS X (10.0) and OS 9.0.4 (with CarbonLib 1.3.1) but there are a number of areas I'd like to see tested more thoroughly:

• Printing, both DVI and text files, especially on OS X (I haven't been able to test this very well because OS X does not support serial printers like my LaserWriter Select 310 -- thanks Apple!).
• Does OzTeX work on OS 8.6, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0.4?
• What about with CarbonLib 1.4?

Please send all feedback, queries and bug reports to andrew@trevorrow.com, and make sure you include these system details:

• OS version (and CarbonLib version if using OS 8.6 or 9.*);
• printer info (PostScript or not, type of connection);
• did you have your fingers crossed?

You can find additional information regarding this new version of OzTeX as well as links to the OzTeX web site on

• the OzTeX Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page.
• the OzTeX Section of the Mac OS 8/9 Versions Page.

ScientificAssistant 0.3.1

I have been meaning to list this application for some time and I am finally getting around to it. This is the second new choice for running TeX under OS X. 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 a blurb from their web site:

"ScientificAssistant is a Document Management and Scientific Wordprocessing 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."

teTeX and FrontBase are required for ScientificAssistant to work properly. The teTeX installation appears to be that of Gerben Wierda, which is identical to that for TeXShop and for CMacTeX. Therefore, you can run all three side-by-side with one teTeX. :-)

You can find more information about ScientificAssistant and links to download it in the ScientificAssistant Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page.

AlphaTcl 7.5d27

This is the 27th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d27 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d21 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.5d8 to 7.5d20. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d27 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d27

• made sure macros package doesn't rename stuff twice.
• added list of file/dir patterns to ignore when building 'from hierarchy' filesets. Added to Ftp Menu Help.
• 'saveAs -f' will now throw an error if given a filename with illegal characters (use file::makeNameLegal if required)
• bunch of fixes from Craig
• fixed small Tcl 8 bug in Tcl func parsing.
• fix for comment paragraph wrapping.
• fixed quote::Insert (thanks Dominique)
• added 'make' mode to go along with make menu
• added new 'isIn.tcl' from Bernard and Joachim -- thanks! This means we _will_ need to add some new mode variables to a lot of modes -- please contribute to the modes you use! I made the suggested changes to Tcl, C, C++, Perl, TeX, Text, Mail and HTML modes
• variety of fixes to paragraph filling.
• fix to copyRing (thanks Dominique)
• added 'Tclextensions' directory where users can install Tcl extensions which they can't (or don't want to) apply to the main Tcl distributions (only useful for Alpha 8/X/tk).

This is the 26th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d26 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d21 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.5d8 to 7.5d20. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d26 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d26

• updated, much improved, file implementation (thanks Lars)
• bunch of updates to examples, help, man mode, setext mode (thanks Craig)
• removed some debugging code.
• updates to macro package
• added Maple mode -- thanks Joachim.
• small fix to floatNamedMarks
• updated ftpMenu.
• auto-marking of dividers in help files improved.

Pepper is a powerful text editor for MacOS (both 9 and X). It is a descendant of Pe for BeOS and offers a lot of new features. Pepper is Appearance savvy and tries to offer a consistent and easy to use yet powerful interface. Changes since 3.6.5:

• Pepper now handles BOM (byte order markers) correctly, you can add them to documents explicitly using the Info dialog. There's also a system wide preference to add them to new files.
• Related to this is the proper handling of DOS line endings in Unicode files.
• Fixed auto indent on wrapped lines and a bug in wrapping while indent is turned on.
• Fixed several other wrapping related problems.
• Worked around a bug in Windows NT AppleShare implementation, the first block written to a file would get lost.
• Some performance improvements in ATSUI rendering
• Even more fixes in wrapping
• There are now two key commands to select the next or previous document.
• Keychain now works again in OS X
• The current line can now have its own background color
• Tag protection. For each syntax style you can now tell Pepper to protect any text in that style. This is useful if you want others to fill in XML files e.g.
• Improved rendering of invisible characters
• smart indent now pays attention to the setting of 'tab enters spaces'
• Accelerator items can have accented characters again
• Fixed saving files with a '/' in their names on HFS+ disks on MacOS X
• Fixed a parser error in the Perl language addon

Version 3.6.6b fixes a bug in the combination 'Tab enters spaces' and 'smart indenting braces'. Version 3.6.6a fixes the problem with Shift Left/Right introduced in 3.6.6.

See the Pepper Section on the Editors Page.

This is an updated version of Gianluca Gorni's LaTeX glossary for BBEdit. From the enclosed ReadMe file:

"Now I have expanded the glossary to cover virtually all the commands and parameters from Lamport's LaTeX book and "The LaTeX Companion", a large part from "The LaTeX Graphics Companion", a little from "The LaTeX Web Companion", plus the packages texpower and marslides. It now contains about 3600 entries. In non-compressed form it takes over 14 MBytes on my hard disk. Also I changed the name, dropping the "AMS-" part, since a lot more packages are covered, beside amsmath."

He has also included a Mathematica Glossary Tool and four AppleScripts.

Mathematica Glossary Tool
I made the glossary as a nested-list text database to be processed with Mathematica. (Why Mathematica? Well, it is the only programming language I know, a part from TeX). Together with the glossary I am enclosing the Mathematica notebook MmaGlossaryTool.nb containing the processing program and a sample glossary database in the format I have deviced. If you have Mathematica you can play with it. The program is far from polished, but with some help and prodding it works.

Apple Scripts
I am also enclosing four AppleScript scripts for use in BBEdit, that are meant to automate the translation of TeX control sequences to and from MacintoshRoman special characters. For example, translating \`{a} and \mu to and from ˆ and µ respectively. Using also grep patterns I have strived to cover all the alternate TeX commands for the same characters (\`\i, \`{\i}, \ge, \geq, etc.) and all the possible characters following them, with appropriate behaviour. Try the test files to see the full list of translations available. I have arbitrarily chosen to make capital sigma and pi to correspond to the big operators \sum and \prod, instead of the plain Greek characters \Sigma and \Pi. If you don't like that you can edit the scripts, of course.

You download it in the LaTeXMenu Section of the Tools Page.

AlphaTcl 7.5d25

This is the 25th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d25 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d21 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.5d8 to 7.5d20. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d25 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d25

• fixed installer after 'changes' button issues (Craig)
• small fix to latex filesets.
• fix to specialCharacters package, and mark alpha commands.
• cosmetic dialog improvements (thanks Johan) -- I think this is everything from the alphatcl-developers list, but I might have missed something -- please tell me!

AlphaTcl 7.5d24

• various fixes from Craig, Dominique (thanks)
• removed extra Filters folder from Packages directory -- caused by buggy Setx installer.
• added some support for Alphatk do postscript mode.
• new ftpMenu with more flexible/secure password handling (thanks Johan)
• lots of dialog improvements (thanks Johan)
• installer should now work on Alpha 7
• added timezone handling to 'mtime' (thanks Johan)

A colleague and I are offering a 1-credit course at Penn State this semester called "Technical Documents with LaTeX". I have started to post some of the course materials and eventually they will all be available online. I suspect that it will be rather elementary for many readers of this site, but it may be helpful to some, so I thought that I would post the announcement here. The course started today and will run about six weeks. The course is based on Kopka & Daly and Gratzer. Feel free to download anything you like. You can find it at:
http://www.esm.psu.edu/courses/latex-course/

This is the 23rd development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d23 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d21 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.5d8 to 7.5d20. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d23 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d23

• further improvements to distribution maker.
• better yes/no dialog when there is huge amounts of text.
• updates to Alpha Commands TclCompletions, AlphaDeveloperMenu and tclMode (thanks Craig)
• improved date::isOlder
• temporary file cleanup can no longer throw an error, and works correctly with a hierarchy of temporary files.
• renamed "Mode Examples" to "Examples" and made appropriate changes in AlphaTcl.
• added partial implementation of 'clock' for Alpha 7 in oldClock.tcl -- if anyone wants to improve this, please do so! It would be good to embed most of the 'mtime' functionality in 'clock format'.
• removed date::isOlder; should use 'clock scan' now.
• updated Bib, Perl and Setx modes (thanks Craig)

AlphaTcl 7.5d22

• newPref doesn't require the 'mode' variable to be set (solves package rebuilding error with tclAE package)
• small improvements to man mode.
• beginnings of enhancements to app:: procedures. In particular a new app::execute which is much easier to use than app::runScript. Several new procedures aeapp:: have been created which will be used specifically to deal with built-in support for AE communication with applications. This differs from app:: which does not necessarily require apple-events (e.g. in Alpha X or Alphatk)
• added '-changes' flag to the installation dialog, and improved the automated distribution maker to use it.
• both install::editHook and install::openHook examine the install script for dangerous code before sourcing.
• updated mac menu.
• improvements to bibEngine.tcl for Alphatk, and enhanced bib mode so index is rebuilt if it is out of date. Code should now work well with Alphatk/X.
• better dealing with Alpha-Alphatk differences in help menu and readme at startup. Also Bernard's 'images' directory removed from menu.
• renamed PostscriptHelp.html to "Postscript Help.html" so we only get one menu entry.
• install::fromRemoteUrl can find the resulting install file more easily; added file::tryToFindInFolder

Pascal Maes has created a French version of Excalibur 4.0.

The French version can be found on the Tools page in the Excalibur section.

This is the 21st development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d21 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d21

• installer more robust when called from editHook
• fix to installer when placing files in HOME

AlphaTcl 7.5d20

• added temp::cleanupAll which is called at startup to remove any temporary files which may have been left behind when AlphaTcl last quit (or crashed).
• moved filters menu and Filters folder into its own directory in the Menus directory. Required minor changes to filtersMenu.tcl and help file.
• slightly better comments for tabSize and indentationAmount
• small fixes to dialogsNew.tcl and menus.tcl
• added support for '-tails' flag to glob ('-tails' is new in Tcl 8.4). The changes were quite minor, but this does need testing. This means that strictly speaking 'glob -t' is now an error because it is ambiguous; the correct option is '-types'. The code currently accepts '-t' when using Tcl 8.3 or newer, but any code using '-t' will fail in Tcl 8.4 (there are three locations in HTML mode which have been modified to fix this problem). Support for '-t' will be removed completely in a subsequent release.
• added a safety check on startup for correct loading.
• added '-shrink' flag to 'new'
• some startup error messages (e.g. when init'ing packages) are now postponed until after startup since the act of displaying the error can actually lead to more errors if AlphaTcl isn't sufficiently inited. There is a new procedure 'alpha::evaluateWhenGuiIsReady' which can be used for such purposes (it is called by package::throwActivationError)
• updated mode creation assistant
• updated postscript mode (various help files installed need some renaming/rearrangement)
• added simple versions of 'file separator', 'file system' and 'file normalize' to Alpha 7.
• fix to 'file dirname' to avoid infinite directory recursion.
• added another startup robustness check for problem which can arise when you corrupt the package indices.
• added better support for entire AlphaTcl libraries to be read-only, or mounted from a single archive vfs (works in Alphatk now)
• made some improvements to "Extending Alpha"

Richard Koch has released TeXShop 1.12 and it continues to get better and better. In addition, Gerben Wierda has released a new build of teTeX. The following changes have been made since TeXShop 1.11:

• TeXShop can now open .dvi, .ps, and .eps files. In particular, opening an eps file simultaneously converts it to pdf, saving the pdf version in the same directory as the eps file. The version of epstopdf used to convert can now deal with Macintosh line feeds as well as Unix line feeds, so Mathematica files no longer need to be fixed before they are converted. These remarks also apply to command line invocations of epstopdf, since the modified epstopdf is in the distribution of teTeX on this site.
• An important goal of this release is to inoculate TeXShop and teTeX against Fink. Fink is a system which can install X-windows software on your machine. Fink installs programs in /sw/bin and resets the PATH variable so this directory is searched first. Users who installed the Fink versions of ghostscript and/or teTeX in the past discovered that portions of TeXShop tried to use the Fink versions and produced incorrect results. The new versions of TeXShop and teTeX/ghostscript use the correct versions of teTeX and Ghostscript even if Fink versions are installed. (Users who install Fink versions should realize that these versions will be used if called from the Terminal. This is more likely to cause problems with teTeX than with Ghostscript. Gerben Wierda's distribution of teTeX has features which are missing in the Fink teTeX; it has been configured to find extra files installed in ~/Library; it contains a bibtex which can accept files with Macintosh line feeds, and it contains the very latest pdfTeX with patches for Acroread 5.)
• It is now possible to save the typesetting method with the file, so a file will be typeset with the correct tools regardless of TeXShop preference settings. If the first line of a file is %&tex, then tex + ghostscript will be used. If the first line is %&latex, latex + ghostscript will be used. If the first line is %&pdftex, pdftex will be used, and if the first line is %&pdflatex, pdflatex will be used.
• When syntax coloring is on, the symbols $, {, and } will be colored dark green.
• Syntax colors can be changed using the defaults database.
• The preference settings for TeX programs can now contain flags.
• A few memory leaks were fixed.
• A bug with printing when using a project root was fixed.

See the TeXShop Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page for download links.

Rick Zaccone has released an all new version of Excalibur, the wonderful spell checker for LaTeX and other things. The new version, Excalibur 4.0, has been carbonized for Mac OS X and even has a spiffy new OS X icon. New features in version 4.0 include:

• Carbonized
• Can't automatically open the clipboard yet. This feature will return in a future release, if there's enough demand and after Apple has updated its manuals. The options related to this are now dimmed in the Startup preferences panel. This is to remind you that they aren't available.
• All program text now comes from a resource. This makes it easier to localize.
• When running under Mac OS X, there is a cosmetic problem in the Edit Commands dialog. The items in the number of arguments column don't line up. I will fix this when Apple provides a means for doing it.
• Larger fields for flagged words.
• No more balloon help. Sorry, but Carbon doesn't allow it!
• The Help menu is gone.
• Excalibur has new icons courtesy of William Adams.
• Added a section to the manual that explains how to use Excalibur with AppleScript.

Bugs Fixed:

• A word will be recognized as the same word regardless of how its accent is typed. This applies to LaTeX users.
• Fixed a minor problem with translating a capital A with a grave accent into its TeX equivalent.
• Fixed a bug in the "guess word" Apple Event that prevented it from working if the optional parameter was missing. Thanks to Rich Love for helping me find this.

The new version can be found on the Tools page in the Excalibur section.

WARMreader 1.2 and Xy-pic 3.7

I recently started using WARMreader with Xy-pic to label plots and diagrams. The reason I have done this is because of the endless string of problems with various versions of Adobe Illustrator and TeX fonts (who knows what Illustrator for OS X will do to this situation when it finally shows up). It is rather confusing at first, but it is quite nice once you get the hang of it.

WARMreader, along with Xy-pic, is a system for placing labels on included graphics in a way that does not require the user be concerned with explicit lengths or coordinates. The full system was developed specifically for use on Macintosh computers but, due to its modularity, can be used with other systems as well.

The WARMreader package defines macros to read information from a file, indicating the location of specially marked points where labels may be desired. It also provides a link to the Xy-pic macros, which allow arbitrary labels to be attached at these points.

WARMreader and Xy-pic can be downloaded from the WARMreader/Xy-pic section of the Tools page.

Odd Jobs 1.5

Odd Jobs is a collection of powerful file-processing tasks. The easiest way to use Odd Jobs is to drop files/folders/disks onto an appropriate "joblet" (or a conveniently located alias). Some of the supplied joblets are very handy for (La)TeX users.

You can find Odd Jobs in the Odd Jobs section of the Tools page.

Joe Slater has written a bunch of no-frills PERL scripts to address text file end of line variations between platforms. Written in PERL, they are themselves platform independent, so you can take them with you from one platform to the next. Drag and drop files are available for both Mac and PC. Platform specific issues regarding installation and usage are available in the README file, also posted on his web site. The PERL scripts will likely come in handy for those using text files on OS X/OS 9 as they can be executed from the command line in OS X. They are released under GPL.

These No-name File Type Converters can be found on the Tools Page.

I have redesigned the Old News area to make it load faster. Please let me know if you find anything that doesn't work as it should.

This is the 19th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d19 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d19 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.5d17 are:

AlphaTcl 7.5d19

• small fix to installer so it can install the usual stuff into AlphaTcl's home directory.
• fixes to installer (thanks Johan)
• file::convertLineEndings added (thanks Johan)
• fix to setup assistant.

AlphaTcl 7.5d18

• fixes to some navigation procedures in latex mode (thanks Juan)
• fix for newPref with backslash-newline continuations, and modification to 'parseWords' to handle a backslash new-line as well.
• small improvement to cvs system.
• fix to doPrefixText for Alphatk
• changed menu binding for Alphatk of uncomment line.
• fix for 'file rename' in Alpha 7 to avoid destroying resource fork (thanks FrŽdŽric), requires change to file::absolutePath, and addition of file::move.
• small improvement to latex mode marking.
• the Packages menu 'install a package' has support for entry of a directory url. This works for ftp, http urls now (at least in Alphatk).
• added url::contents, url::isDirectory and url::directoryContents
• updated Perl mode and electric completions (thanks Craig).
• added file::toUrl used by dialogs and url code.
• corrected typo in setup assistant, and made alpha developer items off by default. That way the users who just click on the default will get a more sensible setup.
• added word bindings for Alphatk
• some improved help files.
• removed some saveAs work-arounds from global::listPackages.
• the newFileset procedure is now responsible for asking the user whether to save a fileset; this simplifies all ::create procedures, and allows AlphaTcl to keep track of which filesets are temporary and which not.
• changed sequence on quit from 'save prefs then call quitHooks' to 'call quitHooks then save prefs'. This allows quit hooks to adjust preferences, which seems sensible. Removed support for 'modifiedModeVars' variable which has been obsolete for some time. 'modifiedArrVars' too. All access to prefs should be through prefs:: functions. This involves changes to matlabMode, macros, docProjects, recentFilesMulti, voodooEvents and internetConfigMenu, and a variety of system files.
• prefsHandling.tcl is now completely standalone in AlphaTcl. Any use of the 'modifiedXXX' variables is deprecated.
• improvements to user details and doc projects from Frederic
• fixed bug in 'open via fileset' with recurse in folder and latex filesets.
• fix to ftp code as result of file join changes.
• moved HTML and LaTeX help into the Help directory.
• added improved latex1 <-> macroman filters.
• improved C++ func marking for Alphatk ('.*' is bad in search regexps).
• small ftp menu fixes for Alphatk.
• improved installer which can handle hierarchies of files
• added to alpha developer menu an ability to create a distribution (needs more work).

TeXShop 1.11 has been released. The following changes have been made since TeXShop 1.1:

• Previous versions of TeXShop preserved vertical scroll position in the output window when changing pages. The new version scrolls, so the entire document can be read without using the scroll bar by hitting "Next" over and over. The old behavior can be chosen in Preferences.
• After typesetting, users can select and copy messages from the console.
• When TeXShop typesets using the TeX + Ghostscript option, it constructs a temporary postscript file which is converted to pdf format. A preference item has been added causing TeXShop to retain this postscript file.
• TeXShop files created by the new version have type "TEXT" so they can be recognized by Carbon-based applications. This required 10 lines of Carbon code in an application which is otherwise written in Cocoa.
• A preference item allows users to decide whether TeXShop should produce a blank page when it starts.

See the TeXShop Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page for download links.

This is the 17th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d17 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5d17 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.5d15 are:

• variety of fixes from Craig: completions, new document, etc.
• improved mail, ftp menus, and new 'recent dirs' package from Craig.
• fixes to completions, expansions (thanks Joachim)
• new HTML, CSS modes
• various file join/ftp fixes
• added text::surroundingWord
• fix to file::read/writeAll for Alpha 8/tk
• fix for filesets menu hidden/deleted items reappearing on startup in Alpha 7/8 (but we should try to fix deleteMenuItem for Alpha 8 anyway).
• updated Frontier menu, setup assistant improved (thanks Johan)
• lots of electric fixes (thanks Craig)
• minor fix to gnuplot mode.
• added 'save a copy at' to the ftp menu.
• better C/C++/Rez marking
• newer mac menu
• added support for cmactex 4.0
• lots of other fixes from AlphaTcl-developers over the last 5 weeks (many thanks for all of these).
• new HTML, CSS modes
• updated bib to html
• various fixes for Alpha X
• updated location of TIP archives in tip mode.

Alberto Arabia has created a set of fonts for use in Illustrator when working with typeset TeX output. These go at least part of the way in fixing the problem that some versions (in particular, 9.0.2) of Illustrator have with Computer Modern fonts. Alberto says:

It seems that for Adobe the family name of a postcript font should be a prefixe of the total font name. In case of CM fonts the family name is always 'Computer Modern" and for latex and ams fonts "Latex" and "Euler", but the total font name of a font like CMR10 is just CMR10 and not "Computer Modern CMR10" and the same for latex and ams fonts.

I tried these idea with RESEDIT changing the TotalFontName and it worked, but because there are to many fonts i just redump (with fontlab) the textures postscript fonts changing only the name of the family and it worked again, but now for the hole set of textures postscript fonts.

These fonts are available in the Fonts Section of the Editors Page.

TeXShop 1.1 was released this weekend. Much has changed since version 1.0. There is a new version of teTeX, a very nice installer for teTeX, you no longer have to convert your eps files to pdf since there is a typesetting mode which produces dvi files (and then dvips converts that to ps and then ps2pdf to convert ps to pdf), and much more.

The following changes were made in TeXShop 1.1:

• TeXShop has an additional typesetting mode which runs latex to produce a dvi file, dvips to convert it to a postscript file, and ps2pdf to convert the postscript to pdf. A menu item allows users to change between this typesetting engine and pdflatex. In the new mode, eps illustrations can be used without conversion, postscript special commands work, and certain bitmap fonts which do not correctly display using pdflatex can be seen. Thanks to Sean Luke for providing the original script for this mode, and to Gerben Wierda for polishing the script and including it in teTeX.
• TeXShop preferences have been modified to work with a new compilation of teTeX.
• The previous version of TeXShop did not correctly indicate changes made to tex source after saving to disk, so users could close the file without being asked if they wanted to save changes. This is fixed.
• The previous version did not allow users to save changes made to bibtex files. This is fixed.

Version 1.1 of TeXShop is accompanied by a new compilation of teTeX by Gerben Wierda. The new compilation has numerous bug fixes and improvements, including

• teTeX comes with an installer; the Terminal program is no longer needed during installation.
• Both teTeX and ghostscript are installed. Ghostscript is used by a few new teTeX programs.
• teTeX and pdftex have been upgraded to the latest versions.
• Bibtex now works with files using Macintosh line feed conventions, so such files need no longer be converted before being used.
• teTeX has been configured so users can install their own style files, fonts, etc. in ~/Library/teTeX. Therefore the file texmf.cnf does not need to be reconfigured, as in the past.
• Texconfig can handle pdftex.
• ConTeXt has been upgraded to the latest version.
• Texinfo has been upgraded to the latest version.
• The bbold font now works.
• Epstopdf.sty has been added.
• An aldpdftex script, used by the new TeXShop typesetting mode, has been added.
• The new version of pdftex accepts many pdf illustrations which were mangled by earlier versions.

See the TeXShop Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page for download links.

BBEdit Lite 6.1.1

Bare Bone Software has released BBEdit Lite 6.1.1 for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. I use (and love) BBEdit (the non-Lite version) and highly recommend it. As I am sure you are aware, the full version of BBEdit for Mac OS X was released in April and the current version is 6.1.2. Here is their press release for BBEdit Lite:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Gruber, 781-687-0700, <marketing@barebones.com>

Bare Bones Software Releases BBEdit Lite 6.1 Popular Freeware Text Editor Now Native on Mac OS X

Bedford, MA -- May 31, 2001 -- Bare Bones Software today announced the immediate availability of version 6.1 of BBEdit Lite(tm), the premier free text editor for the Mac OS. This is a major update, and is the first release of the product to run natively on Mac OS X.

What's New

BBEdit Lite 6.1 features many significant improvements and new features, including Navigation Services and Appearance Manager support, QuickTime image translation and movie playback, improved multi-file searching capabilities, enhanced "grep" syntax, improved plug-in support, and more.

In addition to running natively on Mac OS X, BBEdit Lite 6.1 fully supports older versions of the Mac OS back to System 7.5.5.

"The Macintosh has always been about creative power," said Rich Siegel, the founder, president and CEO of Bare Bones Software. "BBEdit Lite lets every Mac user have a tool that brings that power to text editing."

The Text Editing Standard

Since the first release of BBEdit Lite in 1993, its speed, power, and ease of use (including transparent cross-platform file format handling) have made it the premier freeware text editing platform for the Macintosh. It offers a wide variety of tools to make writing, editing, processing, or searching any type of text as quick and easy as possible.

BBEdit Lite has always used the same high-performance text processing engine that makes the commercial version of BBEdit the ultimate HTML and text editor. BBEdit Lite 6.1 builds on this same solid foundation, while adding more features and conveniences over previous Lite versions. For example, BBEdit Lite 6.1 now offers powerful tools for working with quoted text (as found in email messages and Usenet news articles): "Rewrap Quoted Text", "Increase Quote Level", "Decrease Quote Level", and "Strip Quotes".

Still Free

Few tools offer the speed and flexibility of BBEdit Lite. Fewer still are free. BBEdit Lite is available for download from Bare Bones Software's web site:

<http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit_lite.html>

Registered users of BBEdit Lite 6.1 are eligible for a cross-upgrade to BBEdit 6.1, the award-winning HTML and text editor, at a significant discount from the full retail price. Details are available at the company's web site:

<http://store.barebones.com/cross_upgrade.html>

About Bare Bones Software, Inc.

Bare Bones Software, Inc., incorporated in 1994, is a privately-held corporation based in Bedford, MA. BBEdit, the company's flagship product, has received numerous accolades from press and users, including an Editor's Choice award from C|Net's Builder.com, a rating of "Freakin' Awesome" from MacAddict Magazine, five mice from MacUser UK, a 2001 Macworld Editor's Choice Award nomination, as well as winning the 1997 Macworld World Class Award for Best Web Authoring Tool and the 1996 MacUser Eddy Award for Best Development Tool. For more information, visit <http://www.barebones.com/> or send email to <sales@barebones.com>.

BBEdit, BBEdit Lite, the BBEdit logo, and the Bare Bones Software logo are trademarks of, and "It doesn't suck" is a registered trademark of Bare Bones Software, Inc. Copyright (c) 2001, All rights reserved. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Details and links to download BBEdit Lite can be found in the BBEdit Section of the Editors Page.

CMacTeX 4.0 for Mac OS 8/9 and Mac OS X

Tom Kiffe has announced CMacTeX 4.0 for both Mac OS X and Mac OS 8/9. Here are the details from Tom Kiffe's message on the Mac OS X TeX mailing list:

The new features of Version 4.0 include the following:

1. The full installation of CMacTeX gives you a basic TeX installation that works in both OS 9 and OS X. The installation can be done in either OS 9 or OS X, the only difference being the location of your Preferences folder. The installation process has been greatly simplified.
2. If you already have teTeX installed on OS X you can download just one file which contains all of the Carbon binaries and the support files specific to CMacTeX. The teTeX texmf tree can be used with CMacTeX. Version 4.0 fully supports alias folders so you can put CMacTeX on any partition. (With the previous beta release CMacTeX had to be installed on the root partition.)
3. CMacTeX integrates very well with the Carbon version of BBEdit and even works with Alpha running in the Classic environment. (I hope a Carbon version of Alpha appears soon.) Since CMacTeX can be run from the Terminal it should be possible to configure emacs to call the CMacTeX programs.
4. You can use Acrobat, Acrobat Reader and the Preview application included with OS X for viewing PDF files.
5. Currently CMacTeX contains the only native dvi previewer for OS X which does not require the installation of the X Window System. If a dvi file has been prepared with the srcltx package, a click in a displayed page will take you back to the editor and the editor will highlight the first line of the selected paragraph. This feature currently works only with BBEdit and Alpha because only these editors have the needed Apple Event support.
6. Macintosh Postscript fonts can be used with CMacTeX's dvips and pdftex. You do not have to convert your Lucida or MathTime Postscript fonts into pfb format.

CMacTeX is a GUI-based TeX system for OS 9 which has been converted to Carbon in order to run natively on OS X. The OS X version of CMacTeX is intended for those users coming to OS X from OS 9 with limited Unix experience.

Most of the programs included with CMacTeX are based on the latest source code and offer some features not available with the standard Unix programs. Dvips and pdftex can read Macintosh Postscript fonts. Pdftex allows you to turn partial font embedding on and off with a single mouse click and allows you to embed the 14 basic Postscript fonts. Most programs can read text files containing either Macintosh or Unix end-of-line characters. You don't need the X Window System just to view dvi and Postscript files.

Details and links to CMacTeX for Mac OS X can be found on the Mac OS X Versions Page. Similar information for CMacTeX for Mac OS 8/9 can be found on the Mac OS 8/9 Versions Page.

On the Textures Mailing List, Ross Moore posted the following tidbits regarding the recent Textures update:

Sniffing with Resourcerer reveals:

1. the splash screen has been updated: 1999 --> 2001 and has dropped in size from 350k to 91k :-)
2. a correction to the *TFM resource for cmr6
3. extensions to font handling, via the "Edit Font Metrics" dialog incl. "To VPL" (don't need EdMetrics anymore for this!)
4. new encoding resources, for the "TeX'n'ANSI" encoding (This is the encoding used by Y&Y products, I think. So now you can get identical typesetting on Textures, using metrics/VPLs created for use on other platforms. --- very important for publishers receiving material that has been prepared at other sites.)
5. altered CODE resources, for the new stuff in 3. and 4. Maybe other fixes and/or new things in there too.
6. changed SIZE and vers resources --- of course.

Blue Sky has posted an updater to take Textures 2.1 through 2.1.2 to Textures 2.1.4. I have no idea what this updater does since no information has been posted on Blue Sky's website and no information was included with the updater. If I hear anything, I will let you know. You can download it from the Textures Section of the Classic Versions Page.

jEdit 3.1

jEdit is a programmer's text editor being developed by Slava Pestov and others. It is released under the GNU General Public License. jEdit requires Java 2 (or Java 1.1 with Swing 1.1) and it does have a mode for TeX. You can download it from the jEdit Section of the Editors Page.

GNU Emacs 20.6

Macintosh port of GNU Emacs 20.6 by Andrew Choi. You can download it from the GNU Emacs Section of the Editors Page.

This is the 15th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d15 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5fc15 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.5d14 are:

• PHP mode fixes for Alphatk
• small fix to htmlCheckLinks.tcl for Alphatk.
• view/remove saved settings can now handle multiple items.
• tex filesets cope with \input names with spaces instead of braces.
• various tex marking, etc improvements for Alphatk ('.*' replaced by appropriate search pattern)
• various vfs fileset improvements.
• errors when opening a file through 'file::openAny' are not passed on to the caller any more.
• lots of changes from Jon:
• ftpMenu.tcl: support for ODB edited files ("Edit in BBEdit") in Alpha 8
• browserMode.tcl: support for multi-line entries
• cMode.tcl: function color default is magenta (to match the actual color it has always been (once I fixed the yellow definition, my source files became unreadable)).
• diffMode.tcl: moves to prev|next file in multi-file diffs
• igorMode.tcl: added .ipf file appendage and 'IGR0' creator
• latexMenu.tcl: "Untitled" -> "untitled"
• contextual.tcl: CM support for Alpha 8
• odbEditor.tcl: "Edit in BBEdit" support for Alpha 8
• aebuild.tcl: default 'null'() object in tclAE::build::propertyObject
• aeom.tcl: aevt/odoc hook (distinct from openHook) to support ODB Editor suite.
• www.tcl: more capable url::parseFtp
• initAlphaTcl.tcl: hiding Alpha 8 dialog definitions
• initTcl.tcl: tclLog and namespace_exists fixes
• menus.tcl: cyan fix
• prefsHandling.tcl: root namespace fix
• vcsCore.tcl: absence of VCS system changed back to "None"

pjarvis says that XEmacs 19.14 is based on GNU Emacs 18.59 for Macintosh by Marc Parmet. It runs under Mac OS X and Mac OS 8.1 or later with the appropriate CarbonLib. Additional details and download links can be found in the XEmacs Section of the Editors Page.

If you haven't downloaded TeXShop recently, then you should download it again. TeXShop was last modified May 5 and the included Version History shows the following (very welcome) changes since April 7:

• The TeXShop menu now conforms to Mac OS X guidelines, with menu commands to "Hide Others" and "Show All."
• Control-1 now switches between the source window and the associated pdf window.
• Arrows appear beside the magnification box for rapid increases and decreases in magnification. Thanks to Sven A. Schmidt for suggesting this and sending code showing how it could be done.
• The tags menu uses a localized string and can be translated into other languages.
• A preference item allows users to configure the console window so it only appears when there is a typesetting error. When configured this way, the console is still visible behind other windows and can be brought to the top with the Window menu.
• Added a Dutch localization by Maarten Sneep.

See the TeXShop Section of the Mac OS X Versions Page for download links.

Sorry about the quick update, but this is the 14th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d14 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8 and later. AlphaTcl 7.5d8 updates versions of AlphaTcl from 7.4.2 to 7.5d7. These updaters can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5fc14 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.5d13 are:

• fix to setup assistant and international menus problems introduced in d13
• added beginningOfLineSmart
• added 'Install A Package' to packages menu, which will allow the user to input a url and then attempt to download and install that package (e.g. copy url from alphatcl-developer list into the dialog, and you should have a one-step way to test any new package).
• added Bernard's PHP mode.
• fixed Perl comment char.
• fix to installer checking for new packages (it checked for modes as well as features, which was not necessary).
• added support for file: urls to url::fetch, and url::store
• added 'namespace eval ftp' to www.tcl (thanks Craig)

This is the 13th development release of AlphaTcl 7.5. AlphaTcl 7.5d13 updates AlphaTcl 7.5d8, both of which can be found in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.5fc13 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. The changes to AlphaTcl since Alpha 7.4.2 are much too numerous to list. Please see the included file entitled "Changes - AlphaTcl" inside the "Help" folder for details.

CMacTeX Update for Mac OS X

Tom Kiffe has updated two programs in his CMacTeX distribution for Mac OS X. Here are the details from Tom Kiffe's message on the Mac OS X TeX mailing list:

Two of the programs distributed with CMacTeX for OS X have been updated. I fixed epstopdf so that the File Menu works correctly. Macdvi now can use database searches when looking for tfm and vf files. When database searching is turned on macdvi opens a dvi file much more quickly than before.

Both updated programs have been added to the full cmactex_osx.sit.bin which can be downloaded from the OS X section of the CMacTeX Home Page at http://www.kiffe.com/cmactex.html. If you already have the full release the updated programs can be downloaded from http://www.kiffe.com/tex/programs/update.sit.bin.

Details and links to CMacTeX can be found on the Mac OS X Versions Page.

"Revamped" CMacTeX 3.7 for Mac OS X

We have some great news from Tom Kiffe, author of CMacTeX. Here are the details from Tom Kiffe's message on the Mac OS X TeX mailing list:

I have completely revamped my CMacTeX distribution for OS X. The original beta release was intended for users who already had my programs installed in Mac OS 8 or 9 and wanted Carbon versions of the programs for OS X. Anyone who had installed TeXShop and teTeX on OS X faced a formidable task of trying to install CMacTeX in OS 9 before even attempting to run it in OS X.

The new CMacTeX uses the texmf tree from teTeX, so the distribution of CMacTeX for OS X is now only one archive file about 7 MB in size. All of the TeX support files needed by CMacTeX are included in a local texmf folder. The actual installation is quite simple.

CMacTeX is designed to work with BBEdit 6.1, Acrobat Reader 5.0, and MacGhostView, a Postscript viewer for OS X which does not use the X Window System. Macdvi is a dvi viewer which can be used with teTeX for viewing dvi files. If a dvi file has been generated with the scrltx package, an option-click in a paragraph in a displayed page generates an Apple Event which is sent to BBEdit, asking it to open the appropriate source at the designated paragraph. CMacTeX includes the latest releases of dvips (5.86d) and pdftex (0.14h), both of which handle partial font embedding much better than earlier releases.

Details and links to CMacTeX can be found on the Mac OS X Versions Page.

rtf2latex2e 1.0fc1

rtf2latex2e is a utility to convert RTF files from popular word processors to the LaTeX2e format for those who value quality typesetting.

The main features of rtf2latex2e are:

• detects text style: bold, italic, color, big, small,...
• reads embedded figures: PICT, WMF, PNG, JPEG,...
• reads tables: simple to semi-complex
• equations: reads out Equation Editor equations
• symbols: converts most greek and math symbols
• reads footnotes (not in tables yet)
• converts hypertext links using the hyperref package

You can download them in the Converters Section on the Tools Page.

Rick Zaccone assembled this package. It contains the necessary components to install RSFS (Ralph Smith's Formal Font) for use with Textures. From Rick's included ReadMe:

The LaTeX package mathptmx uses these fonts to produce calligraphic letters. For example, $\mathcal{A}$ will produce an "A" from this font if you are using the mathptmx package.

Thanks to Michael Sharpe who did all of the work with EdMetrics and ResEdit to get everything right. Alejandro L\'opez-Valencia did the hard work of making the bitmap fonts to go along with the commonly available pfb, afm and tfm files. All I did is encourage Michael Sharpe to put this together.

See the Textures Section on the Classic Versions Page to download.

Pepper 3.6.5

Pepper is a powerful text editor for MacOS (both 9 and X). It is a descendant of Pe for BeOS and offers a lot of new features. Pepper is Appearance savvy and tries to offer a consistent and easy to use yet powerful interface. Changes since 3.6.4:

• multiple selection in FTP browser
• tab can indent when softwrapping
• fixed syntax highlighting bug in PHP mode of HTML plugin
• SaveAs dialog remembers last directory
• indicator in recent menu for FTP files
• Click in first pixel of text area was handled like a line select
• hash variables in Perl are now colored.
• TeX can comment lines and has a fix for commands that start with \verb
• Shift command now works when cursor is on beginning of line
• Buttonbar buttons with a menu will show the menu after holding down the mouse for some time while not moving it.
• User and group info for files on MacOS X are now preserved
• Line numbers don't continue after the last line.
• ckid resource was always removed from the resource fork when saving, from now on it will only be stripped when doing a Save As.
• Pepper can now render text using ATSUI, (Apple Text Services for Unicode). This is needed for those who write Esperanto e.g.. The default text rendering routines cannot render characters like S-caron. But ATSUI doesn't work flawlessly, it is much slower than the traditional QuickDraw way of drawing text and contains quite a number of bugs. So Pepper now also has the option to use an alternative softwrapping algorithm.
• And Pepper is no longer a package but a regular MacOS Application again. I finally found out that I don't really need a plugin to execute BSD calls so the need for a package was gone.
• Preprocessor commands in C/C++ have their own colors now, this means that you will have to remove (or edit) the keywords.cpp file in Pepper's preference folder since it has a new section for the preprocessor commands now.
• A couple of new key commands were added, 'start block selection' which sets a flag so that the next select keycommand will make a block selection instead of a regular selection. The others allows you to cut, copy and clear lines like vi does, works correctly with number prefix as well.

See the Pepper Section on the Editors Page.

LaTeX R13P0 for Textures

An updated version of LaTeX is now available for Textures. It contains a pre-built LaTeX format and a boatload of TeX inputs. There is no included documentation, but I suspect it is due to Arthur Ogawa. :-) See the Textures Section on the Classic Versions Page to download.

Mathematical Lexicon 1.0 for Excalibur

Pascal Romon has contributed two mathematics dictionaries for Excalibur, one in French (2700 words) and one in English (1000 words). You can download them in the Excalibur Section on the Tools Page.

Haitian Creole Dictionary for Excalibur

chrisluckhart@mac.com has created a Haitian Creole dictionary for Excalibur. It contains 4193 words and uses the official 1980 orthography. You can download it in the Excalibur Section on the Tools Page.

Mathematica & Textures - Inputs & Fonts

Contains the the input and font files necessary for typesetting the TeXSave output of Mathematica Notebooks. You can download it in the Textures Section on the Classic Versions Page.

I suspect Mac OS X is being installed at higher rate amongst TeX users than the general public. With that in mind, and because I installed Mac OS X a couple of weeks ago, I have created a new page for Mac OS X implementations of TeX. At this point, the only page I will split off is the versions/implementations page. I will mix "Classic" and Mac OS X apps and the like on the other pages.

Pepper 3.6.4

Pepper is a powerful text editor for MacOS (both 9 and X). It is a descendant of Pe for BeOS and offers a lot of new features. Pepper is Appearance savvy and tries to offer a consistent and easy to use yet powerful interface. See the Pepper Section on the Editors Page.

MMKEdit 2.0

There isn't much documentation with this app, but it has been recommended by a number of people. It includes a mode for TeX. From the included "README": "MMKEdit is a text editor to write HTML source, C language source, and so on. It supports your editing by many features such as keyword colorize feature." See the MMKEdit Section on the Editors Page.

BibGene 1.2.2

A new version of this BibTeX-compatible bibliography database application is now available. The included documentation does not detail what has changed in version 1.2.2, but it appears to be mostly bug-fixes. You download it in the BibGene Section of the Tools Page.

TypeIt4Me 4.8.2

An updated version of TypeIt4Me for use with FasTeX. You download it in the FasTeX Section of the Tools Page.

BBEdit LaTeX Glossary 2.0

An updated version Gianluca Gorni's LaTeX glossary for BBEdit. This version of the LaTeX Glossary uses the following new features of BBEdit 6.0:

1. BBEdit now allows to have something selected in the pasted text;
2. Glossary items can now be displayed in an arbitrary order, not just alphabetical;
3. separators can be inserted between Glossary items.

You download it in the LaTeXMenu Section of the Tools Page.

With the end of the semester only a few days away, the release (and my installation) of Mac OS X, and the end of 15 difficult months with my job, I will be redesigning this web site to include Mac OS X information as well as the many updates and applications that I have been neglecting to mention. In fact, this front page gives you a feel for what is coming. Check back frequently over the next few days as I will be putting up a lot of new "stuff".

Thank you for your support, tips, advice, and patience.

TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List

I recently installed Mac OS X and TeXShop and have realized that those of us brave enough to do this will have a large number of questions and issues to address. Therefore, I have created a new mailing list for those of us venturing into the bold new world of TeX on Mac OS X. This list will be for discussing anything related to using TeX on Mac OS X. To subscribe, send the following command to info@email.esm.psu.edu:

subscribe MacOSX-TeX

To instead receive digest versions of the messages, send the following command to info@email.esm.psu.edu:

subscribe digest MacOSX-TeX

You can send messages to the list and your messages will be sent to the other list subscribers. Send messages to:

TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List

TeXShop 1.0

A very nice port of TeX to Mac OS X is now available in the form of a slick little application called TeXShop. 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. TeXShop uses teTeX, the standard distribution of TeX for Unix machines. The distribution includes tex, latex, dvips, tex fonts, cyrillic fonts, and more. Version 1.0 is the seventh release of TeXShop. The program is distributed under the GPL public license, and is thus free.

More details regarding TeXShop will appear on the "Mac OS X Versions" page that I will be creating later this week as part of the site redesign.

CMacTeX 3.7

As many of you know CMacTeX has been updated to version 3.7. It includes numerous updates and bug fixes as well as a beta version for Mac OS X. Details and links to CMacTeX can be found on the Mac OS 8/9 Versions Page.

Alpha 7.4.2

You can download it from the Alpha section of the Editors Page. Changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.4 include:

• Fixed a startup error when rebuilding the package indices.
• Added rudimentary help to those packages completely missing help.
• Some updates in the Alpha Manual. (thanks Craig)
• Removed the packages "Notes" and "Windows menu fixes".
• "Revert to backup" is now enabled when it should be.

This is a bit off topic, but I thought that some of the people visiting these pages might be some of the same people looking for a technical position (a post-doc in materials science). The person looking to hire a post-doc is, after all, my wife. :-)

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University

A postdoctoral research associate is sought to participate in an investigation of electrical contacts to the antimonide based compound semiconductors. These semiconductors are of growing interest for optoelectronic and low power electronic devices. We will develop an understanding of the thermodynamic and kinetic factors that control interdiffusion and phase formation at the interface between the metal electrical contacts and the antimonide based compound semiconductors, and we will use the understanding we develop to engineer the electrical performance of the contacts.

Information about our group's research activities is available on the Internet at http://www.esm.psu.edu/mohney/. Interested candidates should forward a resume to Suzanne Mohney at mohney@ems.psu.edu.

You can download it from the Alpha section of the Editors Page. Changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.4 include:

• Fixed a startup error when rebuilding the package indices.
• Added rudimentary help to those packages completely missing help.
• Some updates in the Alpha Manual. (thanks Craig)
• Removed the packages "Notes" and "Windows menu fixes".
• "Revert to backup" is now enabled when it should be.

This is the final release of Alpha 7.4. It includes the final release of AlphaTcl 7.4. You can download it from the Alpha section of the Editors Page. Changes to AlphaTcl since AlphaTcl 7.4fc7 include:

• small fix to uninstall strings in package.tcl
• recent files (multi) menus give error and alert when activated concurrently.
• small fix to 'printAll'
• fixes to dialog::getUrl, tcl rebuild index for win, escape smart stuff (tex mode).

This is the third final candidate release of AlphaTcl 7.4. The full Alpha 7.4fc2 package is available in the Alpha section of the Editors Page. AlphaTcl 7.4fc3 updates supporting .tcl files and not the application itself. Changes since AlphaTcl 7.4fc2 are:

• tex fileset creation returns '$name' correctly.
• small fixes, msgs to filesets and filesets menus, setup assistant.
• win::searchAndHyperise only rejects very long hypers, not colours, and help.tcl updated to only mark single-line hypers.
• workaround for menu name too large.
• fix for nasty tex filesets bug (thanks Dominique!)
• changed names of all cached variables and files for filesetsMenu, to avoid odd startup errors due to old prefs still present. More robust fix will have to wait till after 7.4 release.
• removed 'popup' fileset choices in utils.
• bibtex fix so bibtexMode.tcl is always loaded first, plus index->database fix.
• recent files rebuild of fileset utils menu, triggered by hook calls.
• various calls to fileset-new hooks etc actually provide the 'type' argument.
• stat modes fixes, esp. odd eols. new text tutorial.
• couple of fixes to Diff mode.
• doc projs fix.
• non-easy-install fix (thanks Tom)
• fix to dialog::getOldFlag for global::allPrefs and misc page.
• package descriptions for menus have correct active/inactive state.
• setext bind fix.
• various fixes from Alpha-D: Stat modes, java marking, latex searching, sentenceRegion, ps mode, gnuplot global bindings removed.
• alpha voodoo 2.0
• fix to 'source', 'this-file', 'this-directory' usage of paths so that if Alpha(tk) is moved, these still work correctly. These all use a new procedure alpha::actionOnFileScript
• some filesets fixes ('Choose' menu is updated).
• ada mode minor changes.

The Sale Saga Continues!

The sale on Gratzer's book, Math into LaTeX, 3rd Ed., at Amazon.com is on again. It can be had for $14.98. Get it while you can!

The sale on Gratzer's book at Amazon.com appears to be over so you can no longer get it for $15.00. Of course, it is still an excellent book and well worth the $49.95 price. By the way, Barnes & Noble has it for $39.96.