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The nicest LaTeX front-end is LyX, http://www.lyx.org/

The only pdf-editor like things around are drawing programs --- although Enfocus Tailor.app would do pretty much as you wish for PostScript documents, but it's not that accessible given that you need a NeXT or a copy of OPENSTEP to use it. The most reliable way to edit a .pdf is to use the Adobe Acrobat plug-in Enfocus PitStop. Not cheap. Not word-processor like (editing more than a character or two is a study in tediousness).

Using drawing programs to open up arbitrary .pdfs can be workable, but isn't word-processor-like --- that said, I've done it in the past (one example, book done in a proprietary composition program (Miles 33 for the morbidly curious) which needed reprint corrections --- open up the relevant chapters in FreeHand 8, get _all_ of the pages and formatting (after a few minor tweaks) then re-assemble the text blocks which want editing). These days I'd probably use Cenon for this, http://www.cenon.info/ (not saying it's as good as FH8, but at least it's viable today on decent OSes and being opensource is more likely to improve than FreeHand since its purchase by Adobe)

As an alternative, opening up a .pdf and directly converting it to .rtf is a useful option and may be more workable for you --- Marcel Weiher's TextLightning.app for Mac OS X (shareware at http://www.metaobject.com/ ) is one of the best programs for this.

NeoOffice has been workable for me thus far. For a spreadsheet in Mac OS X I've been using Flexisheet from Material Arts (opensource Lotus Improv / Quantrix clone).

William

This is true, but there's PDFCompress for $27. Not free, but cheaper than Adobe Acrobat.

I agree, High-order messaging is another great example of the power of the Objective-C runtime.

-jcr

At work I use amanda and hfstar to back up my PowerMac G5 using our amanda backup server (which also handles our Solaris and Linux boxes). It works pretty well, although it takes some work to set up.

If you've already got amanda set up for other machines, it's not too much work to add a Mac OS X box to your amanda setup.

If you only have one machine which you want to back up, then amanda is overkill.

HFStar will however pickup resource forks you can install it seperately or with fink. On the plus side the source is full available and it is of course GOL compliant.

As I mentioned in an earlier post be very careful with some of the copying/archiving utilities that come with Mac OS X. Many of them are not intended to copy Mac files, these utilities often strip metadata and resource forks and end up ruining files.

Instead you need to use alternate tools included with Mac OS X such as ditto, CpMac, and hdiutil. There are also 3rd party utilities such as the tar replacement hfstar (located at the bottom of the page), and the rsync replacement RsyncX.

Heads up on using an XServe. It's really cool, but there are some Apple-particular quirks that got me when I went from using RH to using an XServe. This is with version 10.2.6 so some of these may already be addressed in Panther.

No PDC functionality in Apple's implementation of Samba (I know this is fixed in Panther)

DHCP does not use any MAC address filtering if you want to control it that way. The address filtering screen you see applies to Netboot devices only. (Don't know if this is "fixed" in Panther. It's just not available in 10.2.6)

No native SCSI tape drive support in OS X Kernel. Seriously. If you install a SCSI card, you will be dependent on your backup software vendors SCSI driver solution.

No recommended or "built-in" backup software for your files. You basically have to decide how you are going to do this keeping in mind that the HFS+ file system will not "show" resource forks to typical Unix backups like tar or dump. There is an hfstar utility available from MetaObject which is a patch to GNUtar.

Maybe this was just my bad luck, but we have Apple Support and many of their solutions involve "reboot the server". This is usually unnacceptable in most production environments, particularly coming from a Linux background where independent processes can be killed and restarted on command. Read the man pages for "lookupd".

You can't change the IP address on the server without re-installing the OS. No, seriously. This is according to Apple itself. Although they do provide you with an unsupported script for changing the IP. If you have already changed the IP, they recommend you re-install the OS.

No native way to import user accounts WITH passwords. It will import /etc/passwd like information, but the password will be empty and must be created for each user using the GUI interface. There is a third party utility for that also. Or, you can set the "user changes password at next login" option.

Permissions, work the same as on other Unixes unless you enable Apple permissions, which is recommended particularly for Dropboxes, and Group folders. However, you can only enable Apple-permissions on shared items through the GUI. Also, Apple has different ideas on how home directories should be shared.

Things I like about XServer

Freakin' fast, particularly with a nice XRAID and the built-in Gig NIC.

As long as you stick with the options available on the GUI and don't try to customize the server processes, my 81 year-old grandmother can configure it.

Holds alot of disk space in that skinny server (upto 720GB). Also, I don't notice any "speed hit" from "only" using 7200 RPM ATA drives as opposed to SCSI 10,000 RPM.

Quiet. Unless you get the XRAID, then not so quiet.

To summarize, if at all possible I would try to get an "evaluation server" out there to look at what services you will need to implement and how the XServer implements those services. While it does have the UNIX underpinnings, the customizations on it make it a different enough animal that a straight application of methods and "best practices" from Linux to XServer will not work.

Of course, all standard disclaimers apply - Not an XServe expert, blah blah my experiences may not reflect those of others blah blah blah

Here is a version of gnutar that handles resource forks.