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Martin Ehmsen wrote: |
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> This is sad because teTeX always has been a very stable (if you consider |
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> the mess a TeX distribution normally is). There is a reason why teTeX |
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> has been the default TeX distribution on almost every flavor of Linux. |
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> |
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> But it also means that we (Gentoo) should make the transition to TeXLive |
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> (Debian is doing the same thing, and possible many other distributions). |
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> But that leaves us with several problems/questions which needs to be |
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> solved/answered (see below). |
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|
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I use LaTeX quite extensively in my work. Time allowing I would be happy |
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to help out more and provide testing on ~amd64. I am currently writing |
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up my thesis so I could test it out with that! |
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> |
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> Now for the exciting (but time consuming) news: |
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> |
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> The road to a stable TeXLive in Gentoo: |
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> |
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> 1. Stabilize tetex-3.0_p1[3]. We are almost done, there are very few |
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> real bugs left, and tetex-3.0_p1 is already much more stable than |
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> tetex-2 ever was. I hope this will happen in the next month. |
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|
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This is long overdue - again if I can help please let me know. I use |
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this all the time and have been doing so for the last year. Do you have |
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a stabilisation tracker bug set up for this yet? |
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> |
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> 3. Create a TeXLive ebuild and put it onto ~arch and have ~arch user |
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> switch over. |
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> This requires us to figure out how to create a texmf-tree. In the past |
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> Thomas Esser created a very solid (although containing rather old |
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> versions) texmf-tree with packages taken from ctan[5]. |
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> There are several possibilities: |
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> 3.1 Create our own texmf-tree (can largely be automated by scripting). |
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> 3.2 Use MikTeX package manager[6] which was ported to Linux. |
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> 3.3 Use something similar to the g-cpan.pl script used by perl, to |
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> install packages from ctan[7]. |
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> I haven't evaluated the possibilities yet, but comments are more than |
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> welcome! |
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> |
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I would favour option 3.1 personally, and it would be great to keep our |
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LaTeX packages more up to date as I sometimes have to manually update |
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these packages. |
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|
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> 4. Mark TeXLive stable and kick teTeX from the tree. |
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> Here we are talking at least a year into the future (unless text-markup |
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> suddenly gets flooded by new devs). |
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> |
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> In the process of creating a TeXLive ebuild I am thinking about making |
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> it much more modular (which seems to be _the_ buzz word at the moment :) |
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> At least I would like to split the TeX source and texmf-tree into |
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> separate ebuilds (no matter what the texmf-tree might look like, see above). |
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> Other possibilities are creating separate ebuilds for most of the |
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> TeXLive distribution, like pdftex, kpathsea, dvipdf*, ... This would |
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> make it much easier for us to locate bugs and fix them, but requires |
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> much more initial work (this actual resembles the creation of our own |
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> TeX distribution). |
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|
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It would be great to see a more modular approach to LaTeX, allowing fine |
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grained control, bug fixing and a more up to date installation. |
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> |
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> Comments, suggestions, offers of help, anything would be useful :) |
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|
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Time allowing I would be willing to help out with the migration and |
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stabilisation on amd64 at least (I am part of that arch team). My group |
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uses tetex-3 and we have had very few issues. |
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|
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Thanks for putting the work in - big changes to LaTeX in Linux! |
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|
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Thanks, |
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|
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Marcus |
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-- |
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