LaTeX documents compiled in Fedora are different to those compiled on Mac

joe.pelayo · #1 18th June 2010, 05:51 AM

Hello everybody,

Today I discovered a strange issue regarding LaTeX. I am currently working on my thesis and sometimes edit it on my laptop with F13 x86_64, and others with my office's Mac (Leopard). Fedora has TexLive installed (default Latex distribution) and I believe the Mac has its default distribution as well.

The problem is that the Mac seems to compile the document better (Latex + Bibtex + Latex + dvips + ps2pdf): page distribution looks better for one thing, space is better used. I notice that images (EPS) are rendered with an extra blank space on the bottom when compiling in Linux (which might be responsible for the page's arrangement).

Is there something I can do to fix this? Some option that perhaps the Mac has as a default but must be specified in Linux?

Thanks in advance,
Joe.

RupertPupkin · #2 18th June 2010, 07:09 AM

Are the DVI files different?

If so, then there's some difference in the LaTeX distributions. F13 uses TeX Live 2007. Does OS X use that as its default distribution?

If the DVI files are not different, then there may be differences in the default options being passed to dvips and/or ps2pdf. What options do you use with dvips? I always use:

Code:

dvips -Ppdf -G0 -z myfile.dvi

See if that makes a difference first, by comparing the PostScript files. If there's still no difference then it must be ps2pdf.

kyuso · #3 18th June 2010, 07:12 AM

It might be related to the font selection during typesetting. Mac uses their own fonts, which are slightly different from those distributed by Fedora.

If you stick to using standard fonts from CTAN, then the next issue may be different configurations in typesetting, like different style hints in various areas of the page.

The best bet is to stick with one TeX distribution and use that. Use the other TeX for rough draft.

You could always install the same TeX on both machines. Since Fedora wouldn't have Mac version, the best bet in this case is to install Fedora version on a Mac. You could even install a virtual machine running Fedora on a Mac. If you are adventurous, you could dual-boot a Mac to run Fedora. I wouldn't recommend this though if you've never tried this.