Don Simons wrote: > I wrote > > >|In fact, pstricks was definitely simpler for me, because it was > > >|already > in > > >|my system, but I had to download and install pgf. > > and Bob Tennent wrote > >You didn't have to. MiKTeX would have done it for you. > > I had to do it manually because MiKTeX 2.6 is no longer supported by > whatever server it was querying.
:o) > Now before you lecture me about keeping MiKTeX up to date, let me > point out that I have so much invested in keeping things working So I'll skip the sermon! Though next time you do bring your MiKTeX up-to-date, use the net installer to download a *complete* MiKTeX repository. This has two benefits: 1) Repeatability - any machine you install on using your local repository will behave in the same way; for perfectly understandable reasons, the quality assurance of MiKTeX updates is, in my opinion, low (if I had £1 for every time someone posts on the MiKTeX list "I ran the updater and now everything's broken" followed by one from an expert/maintainer "that'll be fixed in the next update tomorrow"...) 2) Longevity - you can carry on using that version after the mirrors have stopped supporting it (if you're very organised, you can download the complete repository on the last day of its availability and guarantee having the last version) > (and for the most part they work just fine, thank you) It's not about working fine - it's about using unsupported systems connected to the Internet which may contain vulnerability. MiKTeX 2.6 contains a security vulnerability (I know because I reported it), albeit an unlikely-to-be-exploited one. It was partially fixed in MiKTeX 2.8 (and possibly completely dealt with in MiKTeX 2.9, I haven't checked). > that at this point I'm not willing to take any chance of breaking my TeX > system, > and even if it were possible to do a parallel installation, I > don't want to clog up more disk space with another whole version of > MiKTeX. So for my baseline installation, I'll just wait until I replace my > computer before I update MiKTeX, and that probably won't be too long from > now. Otherwise, I have in fact installed 2.8 on another computer but it's > at the office and I wanted to solve this problem while at home. Have you tried Virtual Box (www.virtualbox.org)? Very easy to install and if you have your Windows CD/DVD to hand you can trivially activate the second installation (IIRC before Windows 8, it's ambiguous whether it's technically OK to install the virtual instance with just one licence - but you can always download a 180 day demo ISO for Windows 2012 from the Microsoft website if that worries you). Having installed Windows, take a snapshot of the virtual machine. Now, every time you want to play with a new version, start the virtual machine, play with it to your heart's content and afterwards restore the snapshot (which will erase everything you did). It's a brilliant sandbox for trying out new versions, etc. without *any* risk of damaging your important main installation (and believe me, given the pages of instructions I have on installing and configuring TeX on each machine I use, I appreciate exactly what you mean about the time investment!). HTH, David ------------------------------- [email protected] mailing list If you want to unsubscribe or look at the archives, go to http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
