Typesetting. Let's chat about typesetting.
I love TeX. Actually, I like TeX lots, but I love LaTeX, as well as a number of the newer packages like ConTeXt. I would happily spend all day working on typesetting documents if someone would actually pay me to do it. I think that my love of typesetting using TeX and friends comes from a combination of programming and art. I was real big into calligraphy growing up, and I still have my drafting table, pens, inks, and all that. Once I settle somewhere, I plan on getting back into it.
I know what you're really after. Software. No problem there.
On Mac OS X, possibly a typesetter's dream OS due to Quartz and the Unix base, I use TeXShop, iMacTeX, and BibDesk with the TeXLive-teTeX distribution.
TeXShop and iMacTex are both TeX IDEs (with a TeX aware editor, front end to teTeX, and hooks into DisplayPDF for viewing typeset documents), with TeXShop being further along for my uses, but iMacTeX supports more encodings beyond TeXShop's ISO Latin and Mac OS Roman. iMacTeX is developed by Jerome Laurens, who was a contributor to the TeXShop effort, but decided to split off and pursue a different development path.
TeXShop, by Richard Koch and Dirk Olmens, is my general TeXery workhorse application on OS X, and it's great. There's not much more to say. Download it and hack TeX right now!.
Why use two different TeX front ends on the same platform? They're both free and good! Why not?
BibDesk is a nifty tool from Michael McCracken that allows you to organize and use BibTeX bibliographic databases, and comes in very handy when you want to search a ".bib" database and cite papers.
TeXLive-teTeX, by Gerben Wierda, combines the TeX program base of TeX Live (the central TeX development system for Unix) with the package and macro support of teTeX, one of the best TeX distributions around. What's more ubercool are the neato OS X installers Gerben has built.
You might be wondering what compiler I use for all this. On OS X, there's scant better choice than PDFTeX.
On Windows, I use the excellent shareware WinEdt front end with the Windows-built MiKTeX TeX distribution. I'm still on my trial days for WinEdt, and having used it in the past, I quite like it, but I'm sorely tempted to try out a new open source Windows TeX IDE I just found browsing around today: TeXnicCenter.
Don't even get me started on the wonderfulness of the CTAN
I love TeX. Actually, I like TeX lots, but I love LaTeX, as well as a number of the newer packages like ConTeXt. I would happily spend all day working on typesetting documents if someone would actually pay me to do it. I think that my love of typesetting using TeX and friends comes from a combination of programming and art. I was real big into calligraphy growing up, and I still have my drafting table, pens, inks, and all that. Once I settle somewhere, I plan on getting back into it.
I know what you're really after. Software. No problem there.
On Mac OS X, possibly a typesetter's dream OS due to Quartz and the Unix base, I use TeXShop, iMacTeX, and BibDesk with the TeXLive-teTeX distribution.
TeXShop and iMacTex are both TeX IDEs (with a TeX aware editor, front end to teTeX, and hooks into DisplayPDF for viewing typeset documents), with TeXShop being further along for my uses, but iMacTeX supports more encodings beyond TeXShop's ISO Latin and Mac OS Roman. iMacTeX is developed by Jerome Laurens, who was a contributor to the TeXShop effort, but decided to split off and pursue a different development path.
TeXShop, by Richard Koch and Dirk Olmens, is my general TeXery workhorse application on OS X, and it's great. There's not much more to say. Download it and hack TeX right now!.
Why use two different TeX front ends on the same platform? They're both free and good! Why not?
BibDesk is a nifty tool from Michael McCracken that allows you to organize and use BibTeX bibliographic databases, and comes in very handy when you want to search a ".bib" database and cite papers.
TeXLive-teTeX, by Gerben Wierda, combines the TeX program base of TeX Live (the central TeX development system for Unix) with the package and macro support of teTeX, one of the best TeX distributions around. What's more ubercool are the neato OS X installers Gerben has built.
You might be wondering what compiler I use for all this. On OS X, there's scant better choice than PDFTeX.
On Windows, I use the excellent shareware WinEdt front end with the Windows-built MiKTeX TeX distribution. I'm still on my trial days for WinEdt, and having used it in the past, I quite like it, but I'm sorely tempted to try out a new open source Windows TeX IDE I just found browsing around today: TeXnicCenter.
Don't even get me started on the wonderfulness of the CTAN
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