[prakash]

Hello

I am a biological research scientist and recenly moved to using macs, bought a powerbook.

I would like to know, what is the best document application, for writing thesis, that is widely used by most researchers using macs.

I know of

1. Mac office
2. Pages

Is there any better ones, that is meant specifically for writing research papers or thesis?

I would prefer to use a native mac application, instead of using windows in a VM mode.

Kindly help.

[mduell]

TeX: it's the only sane way to write long scientific documents. More info in the Wikipedia.

[OreoCookie]

LaTeX, yes, that's the way to go for scientific publications. Get a nice editor (I prefer TextMate (€35) + Skim (free) to TeXShop (free)) and download a TeX distro (google for TeXShop, they have instructions there). Before you say `well, that looks a bit complicated, too much for me', you will never, ever have problems you would have with Word or so. You have very powerful `templates' that take care of everything (numbering of images, tables and formulas) and in essence it's much easier than html.

Otherwise, I would recommend Nisus Writer Pro.

[prakash]

Thanks a lot, i have downloaded texshop.

Prakash

[philm]

On a related theme, can I recommend Papers.app to organise your, err, papers. Perhaps the nicest bit of software I have on my Mac.

[Beautygeek]

i dont know what biologists are using, but in my area, TeX is the best choice.
here is a web site MacTeX - TeX Users Group
it explains how to download and install the distribution from TeX user group.

[brettcamp]

I don't know about science research in particular, but Mellel is very popular among academics generally.
And for organizing all your research material, try DevonThink or DevonNote.

[awaspaas]

I don't know any academic biologists that use TeX - it's more of a math/physics thing. Pretty much all of the biologists and chemists I know use Word and Endnote.

[vexingv]

i suggest using office/word 2004 along with Endnote. note that i didn't say Word 2008 because there is currently no version of Endnote that is compatible with it (and probably won't be for awhile as office 2008 has removed a lot of script/macro functionality). and if you don't know what Endnote is (or some other type of reference/bibliographic manager), maybe you shouldn't be writing a thesis...