Warning: this page is old and out-of-date.
Programs for OS X
- BibDesk: a very nice program to manage BiBTeX references.
- Aquamacs, an emacs variant developed specifically for Mac OS X. This means all the usual mac shortcut keys work in emacs, too: apple-c to copy, apple-x to cut, etc.
- Latex Equation Editor and LaTeXiT are nice graphical applications that let you write TeX equations in a window, then drag and drop the result into a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation. The result is much nicer than using Powerpoint's built-in equation editor. If you copy the LaTeX source code into the "notes" section of the presentation, then you don't have to re-write the entire thing if you, e.g., want to change the font / color of the equation. tex2im is a command-line application that serves a similar purpose.
- Quicksilver: A really powerful application / file / etc. launcher. Warning: once you start using it, you won't be able to live without it...
- fugu: Graphical sftp. Why type when you can drag and drop?
- PDF Plug-in: a good plug-in that can be combined with Firefox to easily read pdf and ps files in the browser (only for PPC macs, though)
- Mail appetizer: when you have new mail, a transparent window pops up with information about the message.
Miscellaneous
- dragging and dropping a file or folder from a finder window into a terminal window displays the full path of that file or folder. Note: don't do this for files and folders on the sidebar (on the left) in Finder, as it will remove them from the sidebar.
- command-tab switches between applications; command-` switches between windows within the current application (note this is the "weird" apostrophe that appears on the ~ button, not the standard apostrophe).
- The "open" command is powerful. Type "open filename" and the OS will open the file "filename" in the default application. Even better, type "open -a application.app" and "application" will open. It's an easy way to get things from the command line, and also useful for aliasing. For example, I can use "em" from the command line to access emacs, which can be easily set up (in bash) with the following line in your .bashrc file: alias em='open -a Aquamacs\ Emacs .app' Then I can open a tex file via em file.tex