[OS X TeX] Remarks on the /usr/bin/texprograms symlink

[Roberto Avanzi]

On 26 Nov 2006, at 09:39, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> On Nov 26, 2006, at 02:00 , Claus Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> In my opinion Gerben's i-Installer shouldn't be
>> used any more for installing TeX, MacTeX does it too and better  
>> with respect to the symlink.
>
> OK. Shall I end support by Dec 1 instead?

Dear Gerben - I found Claus' phrasing puzzling at least - instead
of going for the obvious, that is asking you to add that symlink
support in your next mantenaince release... in order to make
transition better for the users!  I hope this is just a phrasing
and not a content problem, as I myself found the above expressed
in way a bit too rude.

Your work gave many of us THE reference TeX on the mac, and I used
it for a few years, together with Koch's frontend.  This made me
very proficient in my work, as I could concentrate almost only on
typesetting and almost never missing a package.  My gratitude will
always go to you, and I will remember gwTeX with fondness.

I moved on.  Now the TeXLive 2005-based MacTeX package is on my
laptop, but I understand that there are contributions by you
in there, and this in part relieves my "guilt" feelings.  I will
miss the flexibility offered by your i-installer, and I am sure
many others share my feelings.  Yes, sure, the UI could have been
improved, but at least a lot of installation fine tuning options
had been provided.  A monolithic distribution does not provide this.

So, thank you, thank you again for your marvellous work.  If you
end your support earlier, I cannot blame you.  If you end support
later as you already announced, this will give Mac TeX users more
time to try and decide what to do.

  all the best
   Roberto





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