• Packages in TeX Live 2008 can be updated over the internet. This is a major advance in the distribution. See documentation about the TeX Live Manager for details, and read the tlmgr man page. Additional documentation for the Mac is forthcoming; see the final paragraph of the previous section.
• Donald Knuth updates the TeX once every five or six years, fixing bugs that have accumulated over that time. This is an update year; TeX now has version number 3.1415926.
• pdfTeX has been updated to version 3.1415926-1.40.9.
• XeTeX has been updated to version 3.1415926-2.2-0.999.6; by default the program now uses the xdvipdfmx driver.
• luaTeX is in TeX Live 2008; this is a beta release of a program intended to eventually replace pdftex. To use the program, call it using one of the following commands: luatex, pdfluatex, lualatex, pdflualatex.
• Jerome Laurens’ new SyncTeX is included. This software causes pdfTeX, pdfeTeX, and XeTeX to output a “synctex” file during typesetting containing information to synchronize the source input and pdf output of a TeX run. In modern TeX distributions, pdfeTeX is used for almost all typesetting, since LaTeX and other engines are symbolically linked to that program, so SyncTeX is available for most typesetting jobs.

I have been waiting for this, not least because I want to dump pdfsync in favor of SyncTeX. However, the link to the zip file gives the following error “unknown error” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1). :( Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Update: The MacTeX link is now live. I am downloading it now. \o/

SecureMac has reported an AppleScript Trojan Horse in the wild. They recommend running MacScan 2.5.2 to fix the vulnerability. For those not afraid of Terminal fu, there is an easier fix:

$ sudo chmod 0555 /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent

• New multi-tabbed interface similar to Safari. This makes switching between open files faster and more intuitive.
• Full screen editing now available. This allows you to focus just on editing your files without distraction from other applications.
• Aquamacs no longer creates backup files by default: less clutter in your files.
• Now uses standard “unified” toolbar, with improved icons, for greater ease-of-use.
• Improved LaTeX support.
• Numerous improvements in text search.
• Can check for program updates from the application menu.

The LaTeX improvements include the inclusion of AUCTeX 11.85, better error reporting and improved syntax highlighting, and improved icons. Aquamacs 1.4 can be downloaded here.

OpenInGitGui is an AppleScript droplet that allows you to open Git-Gui from the Finder. Install it in /Applications/Scripts (create the Scripts directory if it does not already exist), and drag the icon to the toolbar of your Finder. Select a folder containing your git repository and click the Git icon.

Sounds easy. It is. Though I had some troubles getting it to work. The droplet assumes that git-gui is in /usr/local/git/bin (where the git-osx-installer puts it). Installing git from source, however, places git-gui in /usr/local/bin. One could modify the AppleScript source but only the binary droplet is distributed, and a soft link results in an error. So make a hard link:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/git/bin/
cd /usr/local/bin/
sudo ln git-gui /usr/local/git/bin/

The only remaining annoyance is that the droplet opens a scratch terminal. This could be avoided with the appropriate AppleScript call. Again, it would be nice if the source and not just the binary was provided.

If you are a Git-using geek still addicted to the Mac aesthetic, fear not! GitNub is for you…

GitNub is not as fully featured as Gitk—it lacks branch visualization, for example—but is under active development.

This update fixes a vulnerability that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code. For more information about this update, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (KB949357).

Further information about this update can be found here.

Update: The Borg are watching.

Continuing our ongoing text editor roundup for OS X, I am pleased to report that SubEthaEdit 3.1 has just been released. The world’s best collaboration text engine just got better. SubEthaEdit now supports:

• Automatic port mapping making communication over the internet easier—no manual configuration required
• Inviting your iChat buddies
• Friendcasting—the ability to connect to a friend’s friend.

To get a better sense of this see, the Coding Monkeys screencast. It is a pretty major feature upgrade for a point one release. SubEthaEdit 3.1 also includes an improved LaTeX mode.

$ perl texWordCount.pl /Users/markkalderon/Documents/TheHub/Research/Metamerism/Drafts/metamerism.tex

and you realize you have forgotten an option, in this case -T:

$ perl -T texWordCount.pl /Users/markkalderon/Documents/TheHub/Research/Metamerism/Drafts/metamerism.tex

it can be tedious to move to the beginning of the line, character by character, to insert it. Fortunately, bash, the default shell on OS X, has an emacs mode allowing you to use a subset of emacs commands on the command line. Emacs uses two modifier keys—control and meta. On OS X control is ⌃ and meta is ⎋.

Another hybrid application from Apple is Activity Monitor:

Of course a lot of the information displayed by Activity Monitor can be accessed by top in the terminal, but there’s more besides. In a How To article in About This Particular MacIntosh Sylester Roque begins the first part of a review of the Activity Monitor. Check it out to get a sense of the potential of this underappreciated utility.

While on the topic of ATPM, Ted Goranson in his column about outliners (text editors that allow multiple views of a document based on its logical structure), will be writing about writing environments next month. If you are not yet familiar with this fascinating column, the archives are a rewarding read.

I was also wrong.

While I would never go back to working entirely in a terminal, I now understand that the ascendancy of the GUI represents the triumph of the Image over the Word. The visual editing of word processing provided merely the illusion of control and was, in fact, inimical to writing.

In exploring the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, I was pleased to discover that a lot of tools that programmers use are, in fact, readily adaptable to the task of writing.

In dumping word processing for something better, I received a lot of help from people sharing their knowledge online. As thanks and a small token of respect, I will be posting some of what I have learned here.