[OS X TeX] Feedback

[Kannan Moudgalya]

I find this post very useful.  I have always been confused by the
different types of distributions: i-installer, fink, darwin and others?  I
have long been a user of linux; I would just install Red Hat and stick to
it.  When I bought a PowerBook two years ago, I was worried about not
having all my favourite programs running in MacOSX.  I was delighted to
find fink and installed it.  After some time, I turned to Gerben's
installer as I had some problem with fink.  I recall removing some of
fink's path statements and directories.  In summary, I am sure that I am
using a little bit of every distribution now.  There are occasional
conflicts but they are not very serious.  Nevertheless, it is fair to say
that I am not making optimal use of the resources.

It will be nice if Gerben's writeup can be expanded so that a beginner can
decide what installation s/he needs.  Some advice like "if you want to use
mainly latex, xfig, gnuplot and emacs", go for i-installer and if you want
to do the following, install fink, etc.

> No. Fink is a good idea mainly, I just happen to have started from a
> different perspective, namely that it must be usable without people
> having a developer system installed, good for more than compiling from
> sources (fink can do that these days I think). I also have a different
> opinion about a few philosophical points. Fink wants to make sure
> everything works. It does that by separating an area on your system to
> build its own subsystem and that things work together is possible by
> keeping relations within that subsystem. That approach has one
> potential security drawback, namely that you have to give the
> possibility to override Apple stuff. But it is basically a good idea.
> My project never was providing the installer and the packages, I
> provide only a limited set in i-Installer. I wanted the installer to be
> a citizien that can live in many worlds. You could use the i-package to
> configure a TeX installation that you built from the sources and I
> wouldn't care less. I lose the possibility of control that fink has, I
> gain the possibilty of integrating i-Installer with other modes of
> software install and I do not take it upon me to maintain my own
> subsystem. Having subsystems in my mind is not the most elegant
> situation, but it is the only situation if you want to provide users
> with the stability only a controlled subsystem can give you. It is give
> and take, both projects are in a different niche.
>
> G
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
> Please see <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/> for list
> guidelines, information, and LaTeX/TeX resources.
>
>
>

-----------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
Please see <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/> for list
guidelines, information, and LaTeX/TeX resources.