CCK's LaTeX survival on MacOS X Frankly, all of the cool LaTeX manuals and FAQs are useless until you discover some 'nix utilities that are needed for day-to-day TeX/LaTeX use and maintenance. Unfortunately, even having specified that we are using Esser's teTeX distribution, some of this is platform-specific. This document summarizes what I've learned using fink's teTeX distribution; presumably life might be slightly different if I were using Gerben Wierda's teTeX installer. UNIX utitlities without which I would be hosed: (1) getting help There are TWO distinct, non-overlapping databases of help files for 'nix utilities: % info % man I lied, there is a lot more apparently buried in some directories within the teTeX distribution, in a zoo of formats (dvi, txt, html, pdf, whatever). This documentation is a bit of a mess, and that's why I'm keeping my own notes. I've had more luck searching the web than trying to sort through the docs on my own machine! (2) pdf For documents with included PNG/GIF/TIFF/PDF figures, use: % pdflatex myfile.tex For documents with included PS/EPS graphics, use: % latex myfile.tex % dvipdfm myfile.tex (3) adding packages Always, after installing a new package, % sudo texhash This will rebuild the ls-R database, which is maintained by kpathsea. Don't worry, it just works. Install new packages in their own directories in, e.g., ~/Library/texmf/tex/. This will make teTeX happy whether you're installing Gerben Wierda's way or with fink. Maybe there's a good location for system-wide installation outside of /sw (I don't want to mess with /sw, that belongs to fink!); but I have not figured that out yet. Look at the .cnf file at top level in /sw for clues.