On 1/8/07, David R. Morrison wrote: > Dear Mojca, > > Thanks for the update about your concerns. > > When the Fink project was young, we had a number of "system- > something" packages which allowed Fink to use pieces of software > which were installed in other ways. Each of these caused a fair > amount of trouble, since Fink is a tightly integrated system and > changes in those external pieces of software often had unanticipated > consequences for Fink. The "system-something" packages were designed > to test for particular items which not only would be used by Fink, > but also would signal whether or not the external package had changed. > > The only remaining packages of this type are system-tetex and system- > ghostview. Attempting to keep these things in sync with Fink has > been a big headache for a long time, and I believe that there is no > longer a reason to try. (One of the big reasons in the early days > had to do with the size of a TeX installation and the argument that > one shouldn't have to install TeX twice, but by now that size looks > more manageable compared with both current hard disk sizes and other > software packages.)
I'm not quite sure about the disk size. It's true, disk capacity has changed, but TeX has also grown over all reasonable limits. 8 years ago a friend brought me TeX on a floppy disk (I was able to run latex directly from that floppy disk). Now my current gwTeX is "only" 650 MB. I don't know exact numbers, but MikTeX must be somewhere well above 1 GB. I'm not so sure if 1GB is neglegible even in today's disk size units. > However, before making any change I would like to be sure that there > aren't any negative impacts on users. Let me try to analyze the > situation. > > First, as you surmise, Fink needs a TeX installation for its own > purposes (mainly to create documentation for other packages, but > also, obviously, if a user chooses to install Fink's teTeX package > for daily use). If we drop system-tetex, then even users who wish to > run an external version of TeX will be 'forced' to install Fink's TeX. I understand that, but I don't understand the reason why to force someone to install additional 0.5GB just to enable him to install gnuplot for example. > Second, it is hard to use an external-to-Fink TeX because Fink puts / > sw/bin at the head of the PATH. (This is one of the main advantages > of the current system-tetex package, which allows an external TeX to > serve in place of Fink's TeX.) However, any user can adjust his or > her PATH to put /usr/local/bin in front of /sw/bin, which should > solve that problem. It's not a great solution, at the moment, > because it isn't easy or automatic. But we've discussed making a > change in Fink which would let the user, as an option, automatically > put the Fink directories at the end of the path instead of at the > beginning. I understand why fink puts /sw in front and I think that it's OK that way. I didn't try that yet, but unless I'm mistaken somewhere: > Third, your proposal to introduce a fink texlive package as an > alternative to tetex is an interesting one. I personally don't have > time to do this, but I'm willing to cooperate with a texlive package > maintainer (as I already cooperate with the ptex package maintainer > -- ptex is the Japanese version of tetex). I have to figure out how things are organized first (TeX Live is currently only available in CVS and in .iso with all the binaries included). The main problems is that TeX is giant nowadays. teTeX maintainer has quit, gwTeX followed ... I'm not sure if I can cope with that, but I'll take a look. > Let me suggest that you try out the method (suggested above) of > combining your external TeXLive installation with fink's tetex, > putting /usr/local/bin at the front of your PATH, and let us know how > it goes. gwTeX's binaries are located under /usr/texbin, but nonetheless ... there's something I don't really understand. Which pdf(la)tex would be called if I place /usr/texbin in front of /sw/usr/bin during compilation of gnuplot documentation for example? if [ -d /usr/local/teTeX ]; then echo "It looks like you may have teTeX installed .. will check for some files .." echo fi could be replaced with something like # check for teTeX installation. if [ -d /usr/local/teTeX ]; then echo "It looks like you may have teTeX installed .. will check for some files .." echo elif [ -d /usr/local/gwTeX ]; then # whatever ... fi or even better: it could check if tex/pdflatex or whatever is in PATH for example. I really don't think that it's worth dropping the system-tetex package unless a better (or at least equally good) TeX distribution can be provided as gwTeX (but texlive is giant in comparison to tetex; and I bet that many people who don't really need tex for anything but for compiling the documentation, would still prefer the smaller one: tetex instead of texlive). Pro et Contra for a new texlive package: CONTRA: - those who need it have gwTeX already - those who don't need it are happy with smaller fink's tetex - not so straightforward to install as tetex (needs much more work to be done) - huge PRO: - I would like to have luaTeX and since gwTeX isn't maintained any more, this might be a good chance to get it for other Mac (ConTeXt) users as well - more recent than tetex (might be needed once in the future anyway) Mojca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list Fink-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
