"beamer and TeX on Macs" Re: mactex.tar.gz (complete ... Re: [OS X TeX] final tex live 2007

[Roussanka Loukanova]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007, Victor Ivrii wrote:
...
> If you want to have important for you packages up-to-date you need to
> compile MPM and use it or do it manually (MPM sometimes does not know
> packages; so manual job is unavoidable)

I'm sorry for not being behind: what is MPM?

> beamer:
...

> 2) Decide if you want to install it: in texmf.local (whenever it is -
> depends on distribution)
> or ~/Library/texmf

I think that these local places would be good for packages that are not 
in the TeX distribution(s) on our machines (TeXLive-07 or gwTeX); while 
beamer is.

Bruno already wrote about the pluses and minuses of using the upper 
directories for local additions vs. ~/Library/texmf. Esp., if one uses 
multiple TeX distributions, the minuses add up against ~/Library/texmf, 
for packages that are in one of the distributions, but not in some others.
When you switch to the TeX distr that has its own version of that package, 
then you have to take care to put out of ~/Library/texmf that extra 
package.

Also, getting a package into either of the local locations, while it is in 
the TeX distribution that one uses (beamer is actually in both TeX 
distrs), comes with more minuses: I myself may miss to remove my local 
copy, when the TeX distr get a newer version...

If the new version of latex-beamer doesn't get into gwTeX, then 
those of us who want it, have to download it somewhere, and it seems that 
~/Library/texmf/... is the best place in this case. At least it would be 
easier to remove it then. But I myself would wait a little bit: hoping 
that gwTeX will be updated.

Roussanka

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