additional texmf tree for all users (was Re: [OS X TeX] Beginner help with TeXshop/MacTex needed)

[Robert Bruner]

Dear Gerben, and all the other experts who make this such a great list,
(I started to include names, but I'm afraid I'd leave someone out
accidentally;  I think we all know whom to thank)

I mainly just read rather than post, as I nearly always find someone
has a better answer than mine, often already posted (once I have waded
through my mail) but I wanted to offer the perspective of a user of
i-Installer here, since reorganization is being considered.

I am the only user on my mac, and I prefer to use as standard a version
of Tex as possible.  So my needs are very simple, and my experience
with i-Installer is that it worked perfectly the very first time, and
every time after that (to add things).  I have directed colleagues to
it when they wanted to get TeX set up on their new machines, and they
had similar good experiences.

I suspect I fall into the largest category of users in these respects.

Many software packages gradually fall prey to the desire to be
everything to everyone, and become _less useful_ as a result.  We need
to do an integral over all users to compute total utility here, and the
value on sets of large measure is extremely important in such
calculations.

Customizers will always have to fiddle with things and learn, and then
redo things when the underlying system changes :-(  It is great to make
it easy to for people to customize their setup, but IMNSHO (just
kidding) it is most important to maintain this fantastic ease of use in
the vast majority of cases.  The organization just proposed looks good
to me, but I am no expert on TeX internals.

My kudos and thanks to all the clever and helpful people on this list,

Bob Bruner


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