Decision Guidance ⇒ latex on a mac

[bobbylou]

Hi:

I'm a former PC user who just switched to a mac. Loving it so far, but I'm totally lost as to how to start using latex on this machine. As far as I can tell, it seems like there are two distributions that most people use on a mac: MacTex and BasicTex. Is this true? Also, I tend to not use latex to its fullest capacity (I pretty much stick to words, math, and tables) and I always found it pretty annoying that these downloads were always so huge -- wouldn't it be better to just download packages on the fly so you only install the packages you actually use? Is BasicTex slower than MacTex? Any other advice?

Additionally, could someone recommend a good text editor? I'd like something free that does a good job of being latex friendly.

Thanks very much!

[hanshdk]

Regarding editor, I would recommend TeXmaker:
http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/

I am not a macuser, but I've tried texmaker and it is available for macosx...

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

I'm not using a Mac, but I've heard the MacTeX distribution is very recommendable. Further many users recommend the Texshop editor.

Stefan