These are somewhat oudated instructions for installing WhizzyTeX on the Macintosh, without using MacPorts. This is somewhat tricky. Easier instructions, using MacPorts, are here.

  1. Install X11. It can be found on the disks that came with your computer. It installs to /Applications/Utilities.
  2. Install the Aquamacs command line tool. To do this, open Aquamacs, and select "Install Command Line Tool" from the Tools menu and follow the instructions. (Needed for step 9.)
  3. Download the "current stable version" of WhizzyTeX here. Unzip it (double-clicking probably works).
  4. From WhizzyTeX's src subdirectory copy whizzytex.sty to ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/whizzytex.sty
    Open the whizzytex file in a text editor. Find the line:
    # name (or full path) of the dump latex2e package file (without the extension) PACKAGE=whizzytex.sty
    and change that path to where you put whizzytex.sty (e.g.,
    PACKAGE=/Users/lipshitz/.emacs.d/packages/whizzytex.sty
    (Thanks to Vivianne Vilar for the correction and improvement.)
  5. Create a folder elisp in your home folder. From WhizzyTeX's src subdirectory copy whizzytex.el and whizzytex to elisp. (If you prefer to put them somewhere else, do that and modify future steps accordingly.)
  6. Open elisp/whizzytex.el in Aquamacs and replace
    (defvar whizzy-command-name "whizzytex"
    with
    (defvar whizzy-command-name "~/elisp/whizzytex"
  7. Add the following lines to the end of your .emacs file:
    (autoload 'whizzytex-mode
    "~/elisp/whizzytex"
    "WhizzyTeX, a minor-mode WYSIWIG environment for LaTeX" t)
    (setq-default whizzy-viewers '(("-dvi" "xdvi")("-ps" "gv")("-pdf" "xpdf" ) ))
  8. Quit Aquamacs if it's running.
  9. Open X11 and type aquamacs (and press return). This should start Aquamacs. (You must run it this way.)
  10. Open a TeX file. Type ESC-X whizzytex-mode. This should then initialize the whizzytex preview. It also creates a Whizzy menu from which you can control WhizzyTeX.
  11. Send me e-mail to tell me if this worked for you, and where you got stuck if it didn't. (I probably wont be able to help.)