MacTeX Distribution
Developer(s)MacTeX TeXnical working groupStable release
MacTeX 2021 / April 1, 2021; 13 months ago (2021-04-01)
Operating system
  • macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11, or 12
PlatformArm and IntelSize4.4 GBAvailable inEnglishTypeTeX Live redistributionLicenseMixed free licensesWebsitewww.tug.org/mactex/

MacTeX is a free redistribution of TeX Live, a typesetting environment based on TeX. While TeX Live is designed to be cross-platform (running on Unix, macOS, and Windows), MacTeX includes Mac-specific utilities and front-ends (such as TeXShop and BibDesk).[1] It is also pre-configured to work out-of-the-box with macOS, as it provides sensible defaults for configuration options that, in TeX Live, are left up to the user to allow for its cross-platform compatibility.

Details

MacTeX is packaged and distributed by the MacTeX TeXnical working group, a subgroup of TeX Users Group (TUG). TeX Live is distributed by the TUG, making MacTeX less a fork of TeX Live than a customised repackaging.

The full MacTeX install package contains three subpackages:[1]

  • TeX Live
  • GUI-Applications
    • BibDesk
    • Excalibur (a LaTeX spell checker)
    • LaTeXiT (a LaTeX equation editor)
    • TeX Live Utility (a utility to update, install or remove parts of TeX Live)
    • TeXShop (A Mac-based TeX editor)
  • Ghostscript (an open source version of PostScript)

A substantially smaller version of MacTeX, BasicTeX, which does not contain Ghostscript or the aforementioned GUI programs, can be used instead along with a TeX editor as well.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "MacTeX - TeX Users Group". tug.org. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
  2. ^ "More Packages - MacTeX - TeX Users Group". www.tug.org. Retrieved 2019-07-22.

External links