[OS X TeX] Re: End of i-Installer

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Here is a piece of good news.

Sheepishly, I confess that I've never looked at TeXLive.

This afternoon I discovered that there is a very straightforward  
script to
install the 2005 version of the distribution.
TeXLive has a very large number of "schemes," that is, predefined  
package
collections, so it isn't necessary to install everything. I picked a  
"medium"
install.

Then I made a MacTeX package using Gerben's stuff for ghostscript and
imagemagick, but TexLive for TeX. The package works just as it always
does, setting paper size, setting the PATH for command line calls using
Gerben's code as now, but with  tetex replaced with the texlive.

All of my caveats from an earlier email turn out to be irrelevant.  
Environmental
variables are optional, ~/Library/texmf still works, binaries for  
both powerpc
and intel are installed, format files are processor independent.

TeXShop, LaTeXiT, and BibDesk work fine after redefining the path to
TeX binaries, TeX + Ghostscript still works because Gerben's simpdftex
script is in TeXLive, etc. To make sure, I installed and tested on  
both Intel
and PowerPC. ... worked like a charm

ConTeXt worked, but XeTeX wasn't in the 2005 version. Luckily Jonathan
is adding it to the 2006 version, so this won't be a problem.

Incidentally, the TeXLive documentation thanks Gerben in several  
different
places for helping with Mac OS X, making appropriate modifications for
Mac OS X, etc. So I felt right at home and much more confortable.

I think we can relax. Gerben's packages will be up to date through
January, and viable a lot longer than that. This gives us time to  
merge his
material into a TeXLive install. It seems to me that we need to

	1) find others to maintain i-Packages and i-Installer

	2) if this proves absolutely impossible, find another way to make
	system upgrades throughout the year, since TeXLive has no upgrade
	procedure

but also

	3) see if we can get TeXLive in the future to construct a "scheme" for
	us, based on Gerben's extensive work. My rough package surely has
	lots of missing fonts, style files, hyphenation patterns, etc. Thus  
there
	is plenty of work ahead of us. I think we should get that work into the
	TeXLive tree, so in the future we don't have to modify their stuff  
but can just
	take their work (i.e., their scheme based on Gerben's work) and go.
	
Dick Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu
------------------------- 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/