On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Andrew Rodgers <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Stefano, > > Thanks a lot for your answer. I'm not very familiar with LaTeX, so it was > very helpful. Is it easier to keep certain TeX distributions synced than it > is for others, or is it just a case of updating them both regularly? I > currently use MikTex on Windows and I am planing to use MacTex on Mac. > I cannot tell you anything about MikTeX, because I don't use Windows. From what I read here on the list, it should make your life simpler, to a certain extent, because it is capable of downloading packages on the fly if they are not not present in your current installation. More generally, though: it is a good idea to keep your Tex installations in reasonable sync. TeXLive (which MacTeX is based upon) comes out with a new major version once a year. When, and if, you upgrade, be sure to do it on all your machines. As I mentioned, the only real problems I ever ran into where with new packages with very fast development cycles. In particular, Biblatex and biber (bib reference packages that replace bibtex) were progressing so rapidly that keeping track of new versions and keeping them in sync gave me some trouble over the last couple of years. They are much more stable now, and the situation has improved. LuaTeX (a backend that replaces the standard TeX engine) is now in a similar situation. But if you stay away from "cutting edge" packages, you should not have any serious problems. BTW, there is TeXLive for Windows as well. A very brief comparison with MikTeX is here, in case you are interested: http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/19/tex-on-windows-miktex-or-tex-live/ The author (Joseph Wright) is a *very* reliable source on all TeX-related matters. Cheers, S. -- __________________________________________________ Stefano Franchi Associate Research Professor Department of Hispanic Studies Ph: +1 (979) 845-2125 Texas A&M University Fax: +1 (979) 845-6421 College Station, Texas, USA [email protected] http://stefano.cleinias.org
