To use LaTeX, you need two pieces of software:
- A LaTeX distribution
- A LaTeX editor
The distribution contains all the tools, libraries, documentation and styles that you will need for creating documents. A good editor makes writing and invoking the necessary commands to build a PDF from the LaTeX/BibTeX sources trivial.
We recommend:
- MacTeX Distribution. It is rather large (~2.9 GiB) but complete and up-to-date.
- TeXstudio. Free software, cross-platform, easy to configure yet powerful.
If you have Homebrew installed (which we highly recommend), you can install
both MacTeX and TeXstudio from the command line. Open a terminal (search
terminal in Launchpad) and execute these two commands:
brew cask install mactex
brew cask install texstudio
Go to the MacTeX Distribution website in Safari and click download:
This should open a new page with the mirror used:
If the download isn't starting, reload this page until you hit a working mirror.
Once download has finished, open Downloads in Finder and click on the
mactex-20150613.pkg file.
The default options for the installation are fine.
MacTeX is Free Software, there are no traps lurking in the license screen.
You will need enter your password to complete the installation.
Open the TeXstudio homepage in your favorite web browser.
Click the Download button to download the installation file.
Open Downloads in Finder. Open texstudio-VERSION-osx.dmg and drag texstudio.app to the Applications folder in Finder (you might have to open a new Finder window via the menu or using cmd + N).
Add the TeXstudio icon to the dock so you'll find it later.
Create a new folder and download the files
testDocument.tex
and
references.bib
(right click and Save link target).
Open the testDocument.tex file in TeXstudio.
Compile the Document by pressing F5 or click the left green arrow on the
toolbar.
The document created should match goal.pdf.