[OS X TeX] New MacTeX-2008 and MacTeX-Additions

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

I just put new versions of MacTeX-2008 and MacTeX-Additions on CTAN.  
They will gradually flow to the server machines over the next couple  
of days. These packages are dated March 20, 2009.

Readers of these lists shouldn't download the packages, of course,  
because they can easily upgrade TeX Live using TeX Live Utility, and  
upgrade the various GUI programs using their "Check for updates" menu  
items.

In case you advise new users, you might want to know what they get.  
They get TeX Live as of March 19 (but it is already slightly out of  
date!), and they get the latest versions of BibDesk, Excalibur,  
LaTeXiT, TeX Live Utility, and TeXShop. Ghostscript is unchanged.

These releases mark a "change of policy" regarding MacTeX. I don't  
expect further updates of MacTeX until the next release of TeX Live.  
Thanks to tlmgr and Adam Maxwell's work with TeX Live Utility, we can  
adopt the following policy:

1) MacTeX is released once every year and a half or so, when there is  
a new release of TeX Live.

2) Between releases, users upgrade TeX Live using TeX Live Utility,  
and upgrade GUI components using the "Check for updates" mechanism.  
Many GUI apps use Sparkle to update.

Note that tlmgr had a few bugs at first, but they have been ironed out  
long ago. This MacTeX-2008 was constructed by installing the previous  
MacTeX and then updating it with TeX Live Utility.

Dick Koch
koch at math.uoregon.edu