[OS X TeX] updated packages

[Victor Ivrii]

On 2/7/06, Gerben Wierda <Gerben.Wierda at rna.nl> wrote:
> > On 2/6/06, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:
> >>
> > Not really: if some package i-installer puts staff in my local tree it
> > does not
> > advise me about this.
>
> Well, it says so in the install location of the i-Package which you can
> inspect, but for the rest you are right.

Yes, agreed
>
> I could let i-Packages like CM-Super install in texmf.gwtex instead, but
> that has the disadvantage that reinstalling gwTeX would silently uninstall
> CM-Super. Or gwTeX installation would have to become very complex,
> checking for a formally unknown set of other stuff installed on top of it
> (I consider this option undoable/unmaintainable). It is a choice between
> evils here.
>
> You can change the install location of CM-Super and like to install in
> texmf.gwtex instead, of course.
>
> >
> > Assume that Gerben decided to put some such files (say utthesis.sty
> > where ut=univerity of texas) into my local tree where there is already
> > (utthesis.sty where ut=university of toronto). What then?
> > [actually long ago there was a little newsgroup ownership war between
> > these two universities]
>
> Here you encounter something which is essentially not risk-free. However,
> what I do offer for installation is generally some very well known and
> very generic stuff (like CM-SUper, CB-Greek, MusixTeX) and this is not
> likely to crash with other stuff.

And the paranoid user/administrator can create texmf.paranoid tree and
put it in
texmf.cnf.

>
> Basically, I might create another tree for the CM-Super and like stuff,
> e.g. texmf.extras and have that between texmf.gwtex and texmf.local in
> priority. I'll think about that one. Probably at the same time I'll have
> to drop teTeX as a source.

Should be there any source of the packages at all? I mean platform-independent
and not requiring compilation latex packages. May be just a list of packages to
be installed and a mechanism to retrive them from ctan and install
automatically.
I am not sure how easy/difficult it is to implement.

>
>


                                                    Victor--
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
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