Scientific Computing

Building Scipy for Mac OSX: Instructions for 10.3, including how to install Numeric.

Installing the Visualization ToolKit (VTK) on OSX and using it in Cocoa applications.

A list of links to various numerical and scientific programs for Os X. There are also many binaries for download.

OroborOSX: if you need to use X-Windows on your Mac, this window manager, running on top of XDarwin, does a beautiful job of emulating the appearance and behavior of Aqua windows. Perhaps the most important feature is that the X-Windows and your normal Aqua windows are interleaved. This is probably obsolete now that Apple has released its own, faster version of X11. However, there are still some things that OroborOSX does better: see this comparison..

An interesting list of OS X science applications here.

MacResearch: A lot about doing science with OS X.

iPapers: A free (Creative Commons) program for OS X that helps you manage your exploding collection of PDF files. It is especially handy for PubMed articles, as it downloads data about the papers automatically (if you've had the forsight to name your PDFs using the PubMed ID) but will handle other PDFs and some non-PDF reference material.

Advanced Computation Group: Advanced Computation Group: Occasional articles on scientific and advanced computing on the Macintosh. From May, 2006: Special Applications of 64-bit Arithmetic: Acceleration on the Apple G5, by S. Noble, Apple ACG, and J. Papadopoulos, University of Maryland College Park.

MacResearch and WWDC2006: The MacResearch team seem to be committed to covering the scientific computing aspects of next week's (it's over now) WWDC (Apple's developer conference), which look to be significant, reflecting the growing use of machines running OS X by scientists of all flavors.

TeX on OS X

If you use LaTeX, then you probably use BibTeX, and if you use these tools on MacOS X, you need to look at BibDesk. There is a review here.

The EquationService:

Equation Service is a program that uses pdflatex to produce small PDF files containing equations and other text. You can either do the input and typesetting in the main Equation Service window and then drag and drop the resulting PDF into your application, or highlight text in the other application and run Equation Service on it by typing command-/."

Some tips and links, discussion about pdfTeX. Information about TeX on MacOS X and TeX installers. MacOSX TeX/LaTeX Web Site created by Gary L. Gray and Joe Slater. There are instructions here for subscribing to a "TeX on Mac OS X" mailing list. "TeXniscope is a DVI/PDF previewer for MacOSX. It [...] is capable of synchronization (forward/backward) with an external editor (e.g. Emacs) both for DVI files [...] and PDF files"

LaTeXiT: "LaTeXiT is a small utility that allows you to quickly typeset LaTeX equation, without bothering with file creation, preambles, and so on. The PDF image obtained can then be exported by drag'n drop to any application supporting it. LaTeXiT also features an application service, so that you can type and transform equations directly in most text editors."