New Members ⇒ Hi and Help!

[JesmondJester]

Hi everyone,
First of no doubt many posts from me as I love to ask questions.
Was directed towards LaTex as I am embarking on a Maths degree and want every thing I produce to look brilliant which in my handwriting it will not.

I have installed LaTex for the Mac from the latex-project.org website.
Seemed to have installed correctly but from the very first time I pressed Typeset I had an error message pop up and it does so the there times I have pressed typeset since.

I can copy the file in here if you need to see it but not sure what to do. Should I unistall the whole thing and do a clean install?

Please help because I can't wait to get stuck in to some awesome documents.

Thanks

[Johannes_B]

Hi and welcome,

stating that there is an error doesn't help, but knowing which error occurs is helpful

Please test the following example on your machine, are there any errors?

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hi Jesmond
\end{document}

If there is none, there is something wrong in your document. You could post the whole thing, but i think you don't want this. A more productive way is to procude a minimal working example (like the one above, but showing the cause of your error). This way you can learn something about LaTeX and can react to other errors in the future and we have a minimal document to test possible solutions.

[JesmondJester]

Hi Johannes,
That is really helpful thank you.

I'll do it tonight and see what comes up. To make matters more confusing - I am new to Mac (literally had the MacBook two weeks) and LaTeX so it will be a challenging few weeks ahead.

It'll all be worth it I am sure!

I'll let you know the outcome of the test!

Will

[JesmondJester]

Hi Johannes,
Ok, so I created the document, saved it as Forum Test and as soon as I did so I got this error although the document itself looked find:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./Forum Test.tex
LaTeX2e <2014/05/01>
Babel <3.9k> and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
No file "Forum Test".aux.
[1{/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}]
(./Forum Test.aux) )</usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsf
onts/cm/cmr10.pfb>
Output written on "Forum Test.pdf" (1 page, 12404 bytes).
SyncTeX written on "Forum Test.synctex.gz"
Transcript written on "Forum Test.log".


Should I just uninstall and try the installer again?

Just a thought - I don't have any Adobe reader products installed on the Mac yet. Could that be it?

Thanks again!

Will

[Johannes_B]

Hey Jesmond,

LaTeX puts a ! in front of errors. There are none in the test document. That is the usual output you get along with the final pdf. Parts of it are written on the terminal, the whole thing is stored in the <NameOfYourMainFile>.log

In there are information on versions, some calculations, used fonts and most importantly, there will be useful information in case there is an error. Nicola Talbot wrote an Introduction and chapter 2.4 (auxiliary files) is all about the log and its friends. Please have a look at it.

Once you realize, that the los file is your friend, there is nothing to worry about.

[JesmondJester]

I;ll be honest - I think I have bitten off more than I can chew here.

I really appreciate the help but I think I'll need a holiday before I can sit down and look at this properly to learn it and find out what has gone on.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Will,

welcome to the forum!

Ths line

Output written on "Forum Test.pdf" (1 page, 12404 bytes).

looks like all worked well and you got a PDF file as a result.

Well, if it's a bit difficult at the beginning, don't worry, the start may be a bit challenging. You can come here at any time and ask questions, we gladly help.

Best regards,

Stefan