[OS X TeX] Several Answers at Once

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 18 janv. 07 à 06:38, Richard Koch a écrit :

> Enrico Franconi wrote:
>
>>  I am concerned (as many others) with the idea of installing  
>> something
>> in /usr/local/ without a proper versioning system (e.g., fink or  
>> MacPorts).
>> It would enough for me to have clearly documented exactly which
>> binaries/libraries (together with Ghostscript and ImageMagick) are
>> installed by the MacTeX_Additions package, so that I can actually  
>> install
>> that stuff using my favourite system (which used to be fink and it  
>> is now
>> MacPorts) instead of the MacTeX_Additions package.
>
> This is exactly why the old monolithic MacTeX was separated into  
> custom
> install packages. I imagine that users with Enrico's concerns will  
> only install
> the GUI package from MacTeX_Additions, obtaining Ghostscript,  
> ImageMagick,
> and Font Utilities from MacPorts.

I found this thread very interesting. I share Enrico's concern,  
because I use to maintain separately the i-Packages with i-Installer,  
and I didn't want what I had already installed (especially the i- 
Installer receipts) to be overwritten by the installation.

> The Ghostscript, ImageMagick, and Font Utilities subpackages come
> directly from i-Installer packages, and can be installed with i- 
> Installer, or
> if installed with MacTeX can be uninstalled with i-Installer;
> MacTeX installs i-Installer receipts for these packages. A user  
> interested in
> libraries installed with these packages will find that information  
> in the
> i-Installer documentation for the packages.

The suggestion by someone else to use Show Files in Apple's Installer  
is very helpful: I had never noticed its existence, and I used to  
Ctrl-Click the .pkg bundle in the Finder to access its content and  
then unarchive Archive.pax.gz inside to see what would be installed.  
With Show Files everything's simpler.

Actually you don't have to look at all its output: just look at the  
list of receipts in ./Library/i-Installer/Receipts to see which i- 
Packages it corresponds to:

- Font Utilities: fondu, gettext, fontforge.

- GhostScript: ghostscript.

- ImageMagick: freetype, imagemagick, libwmf.

Thus this matches up (I was wondering) more or less the list of  
requested packages at the TeXShop Installation page <http:// 
www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/installing.html>, except for gettext  
(added, that's a dependency of FontForge I think) and the PNG library  
(removed).

If you want to know more about the exact version of each component of  
the i-Packages, then of course you'll have to look at the ReadMe  
inside each i-Package or at its exact file content.

> In a later message discussing the Uninstalling page from the
> NewPackages page, Enrico Franconi warned against uninstalling  
> libraries
> in /usr/local/tex willy-nilly. This is a valid criticism. In an  
> unquoted portion
> of this (admittedly obscure) page, I wrote "the Font Utilities,  
> Ghostscript,
> and ImageMagick portions are the most difficult to uninstall. On the
> other hand, these packages are the least important for TeX users ...
> (so) a user concerned about uninstalling might decide to avoid these
> three packages."

You can use the Uninstall button for each i-Package in i-Installer,  
but you have to open first the corresponding i-Package on an i- 
Directory on the net. Couldn't a thinned version of each installed i- 
Package be installed in the user home directory, allowing easier  
uninstall? (Personally I prefer ~/Library/i-Packages/ to the default  
~/i-Packages or ~/Documents/i-Packages -- I don't remember which one  
is the default -- for the location for the saved i-Packages.)

> The MacTeX_Additions GUI package installs a small README file in
> /Applications/TeX explaining how to reconfigure applications for  
> the new
> /usr/texbin. McNarry Vince wrote
>
>> The reconfiguration information doesn't only apply to those who  
>> need the
>> GUI programs reinstalled. I already have TeXShop, et al, installed  
>> and
>> have no need to reinstall them, but would find the reconfiguration
>> document useful.
>
> I'll put this information on my web page when it is revised; others  
> may want
> to put similar information on their pages. The TeXShop in the  
> latest MacTeX_Additions
> automatically fixes its path preference when it first runs.

Is that latest version of TeXShop identical to that available from  
TeXShop's web page? Or should this page be considered deprecated, and  
MacTeX the new repository for TeXShop?

BTW, I don't remember whether this topic had already been discussed  
on the MacTeX mailing list: is there some reason for not including  
Adam Maxwell's TCO Browser in MacTeX_Additions? The halted  
development, though Adam still supports it I think? I don't use TCO  
often myself, but I remember posts here from people who seem to use  
it on a daily basis, especially for adding LaTeX packages to their  
installation.

While we're at it, two suggestions:

(1) The MacTeX web page <http://www.tug.org/~koch/NewPackages.html>  
should make clearer the distinction between the TeX back-end (to be  
chosen among gwTeX.dmg, teTeX.dmg,TeXLive-2007.dmf and  
TeXLiveMTS-2007.dmg) and the front-end (MacTeX_Additions.dmg). I  
think this separation should be kept in the future.

Egoistically, I'm only interested in the TeXLive back-end myself, I  
install the front-ends separately (as well as others like CocoAspell,  
texmaker, TeXniscope, TCO Browser, ...), directly in /Applications,  
and I install the user CLI utilities as well as gwTeX directly with i- 
Installer.

But on a more general basis, I think the separation makes things  
clearer for the novice user (like the existence of several distinct  
TeXLive packages, and giving hints on what does which), and more  
convenient for the experienced user (like Enrico, who prefers to use  
MacPorts or Fink to i-Installer for the back-ends).

(2) In the front-end and back-end installers, the ReadMe are more-or- 
less the same in all cases (I did not check in detail). The first  
screen when opening the packages is indeed package specific, but  
mention the other components as well (even if saying that these  
others have to be installed from another package), and then the  
second screen (with title MacTeX) describes the whole of MacTeX. This  
makes perfect sense for the experienced user, but might be confusing  
I think for a novice.

Bruno
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