[OS X TeX] New TeX i-Package release in *EXPERIMENTAL* i-Directory

[Doug Fields]

> I think the HOME directory is a bad idea because it is often part of a 
> back up. Suddenly adding 25MB to such a back-up (compiled formats) is 
> generally not popular.

I find this humorous because I like things in the HOME because it is 
backed up, and G likes it out of it because it is stuff he would prefer 
not to back up. Since I frankly don't know what the files are used for, 
I'll defer to his judgment. Nonetheless, I think user-specific files 
should be somewhere in HOME and not in /usr/local, even if they're 
intermediate compiled data (like .o files if you're a C/C++ programmer) 
that many people wouldn't care if the files disappeared.

> It could be in ~/.texmf-config (which is close to what teTeX now has 
> by default), be in the HOME directory but still separate from 
> ~/Library/texmf

Why not in ~/Library/texmf-config then? That follows the "Mac OS X" way 
of doing things, and most people could easily omit that from their 
backups if 25 megs makes a difference. Frankly, 25 megs is almost 
nothing to me (I have Photoshop files which are larger); my HOME 
directory size totals, now, 38 gigs and I do my backups using SyncProX 
to an external 250 gig LaCie on a regular basis.

For the curious, the main components of that 38 gigs:
	Documents: 4.4 gigs of which over half is a Virtual PC disk image
	Library: 4.0 gigs (mostly Mail going back about 4 years)
	Pictures: 22 gigs (my entire digital photo library going)
	Windows backup: 3.2 gigs (Documents from my pre-Mac switch days)
	
Cheers,

Doug

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