[OS X TeX] Installing "MacTeXtras" using MacPorts

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 02.03.2007 um 01:55 schrieb Michael Williams:

> You you be a bit more precise about what you mean by "some code from
> i-Installer"? I was under the impression that i-Installer is not a
> necessary component of "MacTeX" (as evidenced by the fact that,  
> courtesy
> of the Customize option in MacTeX.dmg, I now have a working TeXLive
> installation, but no i-Package receipts or i-Installer.app).

Mac TeX uses some Perl code from i-Installer to manipulate /etc/ 
profile and /etc/csh.login (can be found in /Volumes/MacTeX/ 
MacTeX.pkg/Contents/Resources).

I-Installer uses or used (I am not using it anymore since I do not  
want a geek TeX and unwanted preference panes, disk space abuse, and  
ability to switch between coarse TeX distributions) Ghostscript to  
convert fonts or do some other conversion (I don't have the report  
files from i-Installer anymore and don't want to restore them). All  
the Perl scripts that Gerben Wierda wrote for i-Installer use  
absolute path names ("/bin/mkdir," "/bin/rm," "/usr/bin/basename," "/ 
usr/bin/ruby," and many more) and so the path to gs was coded  
absolutely, too. And since the Ghostscript i-Package provided gs and  
installed it in /usr/local/bin, its path name was coded as /usr/local/ 
bin/gs. Even if you had gs installed with Fink or Mac Ports the  
conversion did not happen.

I also do not use Mac TeX (why should I download a set of CDs or a  
whole DVD to update some 10 MB?). I don't remember for sure whether  
Mac TeX did similiar things with gs as i-Installer did one year ago  
(I assume it did not, it rather would have installed the product of  
this conversion since it's basically a copy of a TeX installation  
done with i-Installer in its basic mode), I remember a discussion to  
install a version of gs that is X11 enabled, that could be used in  
xdvi to render PostScript inclusions on screen.

--
Greetings

   Pete

"Let's face it; we don't want a free market economy either."
         James Farley, president, Coca-Cola Export Corp., 1959



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