TeX Live and MacTeX ⇒ Updating packages BasicTex

[curiouslearn]

Hi,

I recently switched from PC to MAC. I downloaded BasicTex distribution and Texshop. I tried to compile a LaTeX file which I had written on my PC, where I used MiKTex with Winedt. It get an error saying that paralist.sty could not be found. Does anyone know how and where I can install this package so the Tex distribution on my Mac can use it. MikTex would download such packages automatically, if they were not on my computer. Can that be set up with BasicTex?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

BasicTeX contains tlmgr, the TeX Live Manager software. It should be capable of installing the paralist package. See tlmgr documentation or just start tlmgr on the command line:

Code: Select all

tlmgr gui

(or tlmgr --gui) It starts a graphical user interface.

Stefan

[curiouslearn]

Thanks Stefan_K. I tried your suggestion but got the following message.

Cannot load Tk, thus the GUI cannot be started!
The Perl/Tk module is not shipped with the TeX Live installation.
You have to install it to get tlmgr GUI running. See
http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html for more details.

I looked at the link suggested, but it does not say how to download that module for MAC OS X.

Thanks very much for this forum.

[curiouslearn]

I also tried the following at the terminal window:

tlmgr install paralist

I get the following message:

install: paralist
Can't mkdir '/usr/local/texlive/2008basic/temp/': Permission denied.

[curiouslearn]

I found by searching that I needed to type sudo to give it permission to make that folder. It worked and downloaded paralist like a charm. I will try the mathdesign package now. Thanks for your help Stefan.

Though is there anyway to set this up so that it automatically does this when a package is required and not available just like MikTex does it. This process is quite automatic too...no need to copy, paste, extract etc., which is great.

[curiouslearn]

I managed to download both the paralist and the matdesign packages using tlmgr. Now when I try to compile the file I get the following error:

!pdfTeX error: /usr/texbin/pdflatex (file bchb8a.pfb): cannot open Type 1 font
file for reading

Can someone help me with this error and how to correct this? Thanks.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

That file belongs to the bitstream charter font, install the charter package.

Stefan

[curiouslearn]

Thanks a ton. You are a savior. I had become quite comfortable with MikTex and Winedt...mostly because I did not have to do anything myself there. I am going to have a lot of questions as I make this transition to Texshop and TexLive. Thanks to people like you this process becomes less difficult.