[OS X TeX] TeX based on TeX Live release

[Adam M. Goldstein]

Gerben Wierda wrote:
> The TeX (based on TeX Live) i-Package has been released to all the 
> repositories and so have all the support i-Packages: MusixTeX, 
> CM-Super, CB-Greek and the ConTeXt Updater.
>
> (The LaTeX Updater will be removed later. For a recent LaTeX, the TeX 
> Live i-Package is the best choice.)
>
> The old and new TeX i-Package can both be installed on a system. They 
> do not interfere.
>
> There are two special points of attention when migrating from old to 
> new or when keeping them both available for the time being:
> - Your personal files in ~/Library/texmf are available for both. 
> Especially configuration files like updmap.cfg (font maps) and 
> language.dat (hyphenation patterns) are not compatible with both 
> systems, mainly because file names differ between the two distributions
> - If you use TeX from the command line, you get either old or new, 
> depending on what is in the system-wide shell startup settings. The 
> values there are set by the configuration phase of either i-Package 
> and the last configuration run defines what is being set there.
>
> One other important note: XeTeX is currently only supported on intel.
>
> Default install locations are /usr/local/teTeX (old) and 
> /usr/local/TeXLive (new)
>
> The TeX Support i-Packages (except for the LaTeX Updater) can handle 
> both distributions.
>
> G
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> Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
>          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
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>
I would like to move to the TeX Live i-package, and there is one thing 
that I am not totally clear on. Does the TeX Live i-package install the 
programs that previously required additional i-package installation, 
such as Imagemagick? I formerly used the GwTeX distribution, installing 
it according to the instructions in the TeXShop help, which recommends 
installing the following i-packages in the following order:
FreeType 2
libwmf
PNG Library
Ghostscript 8
ImageMagick
FontForge
Fondu Mac Font cli Tools
TeX
CM-Super, CB Greek, and a few others are listed as optional.

Well, so my question, then is just---do I install the new i-package (TeX 
Live-based) in one shot, or do I proceed as usual, installing it after 
Fondu, as recommended in the TeXShop help.

There is something else that I am a bit unclear on as well---what is the 
difference between MacTeX and the TeX Live-based package that the 
i-installer will now put in? From reading the online documentation from 
TeX Live, it looks like MacTeX is just GwTeX, which uses teTeX. Maybe 
it's just a matter of all the names changing now, to refer to new 
things, so that MacTeX should just be taken to refer to the i-packages 
Gerben is now creating for us all, based on TeX Live.

If Fed Ex is to be believed, I will have a Mac Book Pro core 2 duo 2.33 
delivered tomorrow---I will start with the TeX Live i-installer 
distribution. I imagine it will be at least just a bit faster than my 
current machine, an iBook G4!

Another question: if the LaTeX updater is to be removed, is the idea 
that we can update packages and so on as we would have with the updater 
by way of updating the TeX-live based i-package?

Let me take this opportunity to thank Gerben for all of his hard work. 
It has been invaluable to me.

Thanks!

-Adam
------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/