Reserved Characters

The /, nonbreaking space (option-space), and % characters have a special meaning in CMacTeX and may not be used in file or folder names.

Internally CMacTeX uses Unix notation for file paths and a / is the character used in Unix to separate folder and file names. Since the Macintosh OS uses a : for this purpose, CMacTeX translates / to : and vice versa.

Most TeX programs do not work correctly if a file or folder name contains a space character. Since spaces in file and folder names are quite common on a Macintosh, CMacTeX translates a space character to a nonbreaking space (ASCII code 202).

Dvips uses the % character as an expansion symbol when searching for pk fonts. A % symbol in a folder or file name will cause dvips to expand pk search paths incorrectly.

Path Length

Any complete file path in CMacTeX is limited to 256 characters. No one has yet reported a problem due to this limitation but you need to be aware of it. Keep your folder names short.

Offscreen Bitmaps

Ghostview and macdvi use an offscreen bitmap to build a picture of the page you want to view. Using an offscreen bitmap results in a clearer display with characters always aligning on the baseline and colored text on a colored background is dithered correctly. If you set your previewing options to 300 dpi and 256 colors, a page may require 8 MB of memory for the offscreen bitmap. You should use a resolution greater than 72 in order to be able to change magnifications while previewing, but don't set it too high (600) unless you have plenty of RAM.