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This page and remaining pages are about TeXShop. For TeXShop-64, select the Lion tab.

Obtaining TeXShop

If you just want to upgrade to the latest TeXShop, get

But TeXShop is just a front end to TeX; you also need a TeX distribution. All new users and everyone else who wants to upgrade everything should skip down to "Obtaining TeXShop and TeX Live" below.

Below is a list of changes made in the latest version of TeXShop.

Obtaining TeXShop and TeX Live

The MacTeX Working Group from the Tex User Group (TUG) constructed an install package which installs everything needed to run TeX on Mac OS X in one step. This package is free, and uses Apple's standard installer; installation takes four to eight minutes and is automatic. The package installs TeX Live, the complete reference edition of TeX produced in cooperation by TeX User Groups across the world. It also installs several GUI utilities for TeX including TeXShop, so it is not necessary to get the front end separately. Everything is completely configured and ready to use once the installer finishes its job.

MacTeX is a large download, over a gigabyte. To obtain it, click on the following link: MacTeX.mpkg.zip.

About MacTeX and TeX Live

For more details about MacTeX, go to the MacTeX web page, www.tug.org/mactex. Notice in particular that a much smaller download is available from this page for users with slow download speeds.

TeX Live 2010 is a significant upgrade, and TeX users will want to switch to it. TeX Live runs on almost all modern operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux, and various forms of BSD Unix. The distribution is the same on all of these systems; nothing has been added, subtracted, or modified to make it work on OS X. The distribution contains essentially every TeX tool in common use today: Plain TeX, LaTeX, AMS-TeX, ConTeXt, XeTeX, and others, as well as a complete array of packages, style files, and fonts.

Another way to get MacTeX is to join TUG; the package is on the DVD sent immediately to new members and once a year to continuing members. This DVD contains extra front-ends for Mac OS X and many other useful TeX utilities. It also contains complete TeX distributions for Windows, GNU/Linux, and other Unix systems.

TUG membership benefits include three issues of TUGBoat, the journal of the organization, and additional CD's containing the CTAN TeX archive of style files, packages, fonts, documentation, etc. For details on joining, see http://www.tug.org.

Other MacTeX Packages

If you do not want to download the gigantic MacTeX-2010, you can use smaller packages developed by the MacTeX Working group. These are available by going to http://www.tug.org/mactex/2010/morepackages.html.

The first of these packages, MacTeX-Additions (189 MB), installs everything except TeX: Ghostscript, the ImageMagick "convert" Utility, and the GUI front ends TeXShop, BibDesk, LaTeXiT, and Excalibur. Strictly speaking, all of this is optional. To run TeX, it suffices to obain TeXShop and a TeX installation.

The second package available at the site is BasicTeX (85 MB). It is a subset of TeX Live designed for easy download by users with limited download speed, but is remarkably complete, with TeX, LaTeX, AMS-TeX, ConTeXt, XeTeX, and most commonly used packages, fonts, and style files.

Let's summarize. To use TeX on Mac OS X, it suffices to install TeXShop and one of BasicTeX or TeXLive-2009. For a more complete installation, install MacTeX-2010.

Other Versions of TeXShop

Here are other versions of TeXShop, just in case: