Installing the mathabx fonts on a Mac running the MacTeX-2008 distribution


It seems that there are few (if any) instructions available about how to install the mathabx fonts on a Mac running the MacTeX-2008 distribution (the distribution including TeXShop), so I have posted here what I did (in May 2008). I gathered most of this information from this discussion board thread and updated as necessary.

  1. Download the mathabx font package. At the time I installed mathabx, the package available from Anthony Phan's website was suspiciously missing the matha7.mf file, so I recommend downloading the package from CTAN.
  2. Unzip this file on the Desktop, creating a folder named "mathabx".
  3. Open a Terminal window and issue the following commands: 
    cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/source/public/
sudo mkdir mathabx
cd mathabx
sudo cp ~/Desktop/mathabx/source/* .
      
cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/tex/latex
sudo mkdir mathabx
cd mathabx
sudo cp ~/Desktop/mathabx/texinputs/mathabx.dcl .
sudo cp ~/Desktop/mathabx/texinputs/mathabx.sty .

cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/
sudo mktexlsr
  4. The mathabx fonts (for a list, see here or the Comprehensive LaTeX symbol list) should now be available in any LaTeX document which includes 
    \usepackage{mathabx}