[OS X TeX] Finally we are grown up

[Claus Gerhardt]

Gerben,

I am really sorry, if my reference to rumours, myths and brainwashing  
gave the impression that I alluded that you or anyone else started  
these rumours and kept them alive. This is not my opinion and I  
really regret, if you had this impression.

These are rumours, opinions, that go around, get augmented, and are  
finally acting like brainwashing. I meant this only as a description  
of the present state not as an intentional act of anybody.

Anyway, I shouldn't have used the term brainwashing, even, if I only  
tried to describe a state of mind, sorry.

I also respect and are grateful for what you have done in the past  
for tex on Mac, I profited myself from it. But I think, that at least  
since 2005 TeXLive (TUG) is an alternative to your installation, and  
as I tried to make clear in my recent posts, it is even a better  
alternative in my opinion.

Moreover, since you stopped your work on installing tex, TeXLive-TUG  
is certainly the only alternative that we have. But my belief is that  
the present TeXLive is so excellent that any repackaging  of its  
content is unnecessary and an improvement is hardly imaginable. Of  
course, one can always offer a one click installation vehicle, and  
such a vehicle is being worked on at the moment by Richard Koch.

The message that I tried to convey to the members of this list is,  
that your departure, so sad it is, has turned out to be a (partial)  
advantage for installing tex on Mac, since now we are getting  
TeXLive's original full install.

Of course, we could have had it before, but we didn't believe it was  
possible, me included.

Claus


On Nov 19, 2006, at 0:30, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> On Nov 18, 2006, at 21:40 , Claus Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> Themis remarks underline what I described previously as  
>> rumours, ... These are carefully nurtured myths resulting in  
>> brainwashing.
>
> Words like myths and brainwashing do not help when you are trying  
> to have a discussion on merits of various technical options or its  
> history and the suggestions from those word are not very friendly.  
> Having said that:
>
> - Installing TeX Live via the install script is simple enough.  
> However, I have had interaction with enough users over the year and  
> anything involving the command line scares the hell out of them,  
> independently from the fact if the install is actually simple or not
> - TeX Live has never been an option for a dowloadable TeX until  
> recently with the increase in bandwidth and it might still be only  
> a valid download option for a minority. This will change of course.
> - The situation in 2001-2003 was quite different from now. During  
> that time, for instance, it was very important to keep up to date  
> with the rapid development of (and bugfixes for) pdfTeX (especially  
> on the Mac) and that meant that a way to update your binaries apart  
> from the texmf tree was important.
> - Nobody has ever steered people away from TeX Live on this list in  
> my knowledge. I think I have personally told people about the TL  
> option (on disc) if they wanted a lot more than what was in gwTeX.
> - An initial install is not a big problem, even more so if the only  
> thing you want to adapt is the paper size. Some people may remember  
> the original TeXGSInstaller.app. The real complexity comes when  
> people want to adapt, update, add to, and then update again. Or TeX  
> goes haywire it seems but the problem turns out to be something  
> else entirely (finding that out for people is also difficult and  
> time consuming, especially at a distance).
>
> G
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