[OS X TeX] Installing packages

[Maarten Sneep]

On 5 jun 2004, at 8:32, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> On Jun 4, 2004, at 23:12, Maarten Sneep wrote om the Mac OS X TeX 
> mailing list on which base to use for updating your TDS over the 
> internet:
>
>> Integrating with the MikTeX work seems a logical route, it is after 
>> all a much larger community.
>
> It would be better if the CTAN structure or the TeX Live structure 
> would enable an implementation of the sort of installation mechanism 
> that MiKTeX has. That is, keep date stamps of packages (so you can see 
> what has been updated when) and have them available for 'direct' 
> install without going through the source-to-final hoops.

Agreed, come to think of it: integration with 
http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/ (The TeX catalogue) might be a better 
idea: the descriptions are readily available (which makes browsing 
easier). "All" that is needed (which is a _lot_ of work) is adding the 
installation method of that package to the description. This could be 
done is some hidden tags in the html, so that the result is easily 
machine parseable, but normally invisible to the users.

I don't know if the maintainers of that system would be jumping for joy 
on the prospect of the extra workload...

Maarten

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