On Feb 8, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Mojca Miklavec wrote: > On 2/7/07, Paul Fons wrote: >> I am a little late it would appear to enter into the discussion on >> fink's internal tex conflicting with external texs, but I thought I >> would offer an idea to potentially solve the problem. First, I think >> that everyone would agree that the (obsolete and discontinued) >> version of teTeX included with fink is a poor choice for people who >> use tex for writing. > > For those who don't require much and for compiling the documentation, > teTeX might still be usable, but for anyone with some reasonable > demands, it's out of question. > >> On the other hand, teaching fink above every >> version of TeX that people may use would seem to be a waste of energy >> as well. > >> Proposal: if fink only needs a rudimentary TeX to typeset >> documentation, why not 1. require a fink version of tex that is >> always in the same place on all systems (e.g. binary compatibility) >> and 2. hide the installation of this tex by placing it off the user's >> path (e.g. place the tex binaries in a "standard" location within the >> fink /sw subtree that only fink knows about? > > That's possible, although I cannot really imagine the amount of work > needed to fix all the packages, so that they will become aware of that > change. > > Although - when I think about it again: if one would set the necessary > TeX variables and add the fink's "hidden" TeX executables to PATH only > during installation of new packages (my impression was that most > packages need it for compiling documentation, but I may be wrong), > that should work, but on the other hand you still have people who > would indeed be interested in using those binaries. So you need to > have two variants then (one hidden and one visible, depending on user > needs.) > >> I noted that it was >> also suggested to change the path order, but this is a questionable >> solution and would likely cause lots of problems down the road (a >> debugging nightmare). As the fink tex solution is really not useful >> outside of fink, why not try the solution above? > > I had serious problems if /sw path was at the beginning, I don't > experince problems now when I installed fink's teTeX (and moved /sw at > the end). >
More thoughts on latex and fink. I was trying to be careful about being dismissive of the quality of teTeX and thought that message got through fairly well in my original post. Having said that having teTeX on the search path is potentially going to cause lots of problems in the future for those who need to use a more modern distribution of TeX. I think fink *does* belong first on the search path and for such a major thing as TeX, fink shouldn't break multiple users setups by insisting on installing an outdated, unmaintained version of TeX in a outside accessible manner unless it is specifically requested to. As such, I would propose a simple elaboration on my initial suggestion. 1. Install a locally accessible (e.g. not on the exported search path) version of teTeX. Packages that need to use TeX for building of documentation can use this. This would avoid breaking TeX installations outside of fink. 2. Retain the current package so that users who have only small TeX needs can use the internal TeX -- e.g. this would simply put a symbolic link in place to the "hidden" teTeX. I am a little frustrated now that packages such as gnuplot (which is a very useful package -- thank you) require installation of an problem causing TeX package that is only required for internal documentation generation. I don't think moving fink's position on the path list is a good idea as it will only cause problems with incompatible versions of things interacting -- e.g. it will lead to the exact problems that fink was created to address! I would agree that the size of the teTeX distribution is not significant and that it is fine to install it so long as it is not exported (I wish this were true of TeXLive). In my view, the whole point of fink is to create an environment which runs many potentially interacting programs with little maintenance. With the sole exception of TeX, there is little reason not to use fink's version of a given application, but TeX is an obvious exception. We should find a way to allow use of an outside TeX without having to break fink (e.g. moving the path position around is an excellent way to potentially cause problems). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier. Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
