[OS X TeX] Re: suggestion

[epicurus at forallx.net]

> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 16:32:39 -0500
> From: epicurus at forallx.net
> Subject: [OS X TeX] suggestion
> 
> There've been some complaints about the lag of TL2009 showing up on
> servers.  I certainly don't mind waiting.  But I will say it was
> supremely irritating that the following three things were
> simultaneously true:
> 
> (1) The MacTeX page tug.org/mactex had a link that said it was TL2009
> (complete with a date and size), and gave no indication that TL2008
> might get downloaded instead.  The "note" seems only to reflect that
> either TL2009 would be downloaded or, if a mirror wasn't up to date,
> nothing at all would be downloaded. 
> 
> (2) The result of clicking on that link was the download of a file
> that was in fact TL2008.
> 
> (3) The filename, both once downloaded and as appeared at the end of
> the URL in Safari's status bar, gave zero indication that it was for
> TL2008.  In fact, it gives no indication of year at all.
> 
> These three together are seriously misleading.  I had no way of
> knowing that TL2008 was coming until it was already downloaded and
> unzipped.  Had either (1) or (3) been absent, I wouldn't have wasted
> all that time downloading.  When using Safari for downloading, we
> don't see what symbolic links are pointing to what.
> 
> Please, in the future, either make (1) or (3) go away.  That will
> solve this problem.

On rereading my message, I see that I phrased it poorly so that some
might take offense (indeed some did).  When I said it was irritating
that "these three things are simultaneously true", I wasn't providing
a list of things that are each individually irritating.  Rather, any
two of those three, without the third, wouldn't be irritating to me at
all.  The three of them, however, were jointly irritating.

My complaint was that, having clicked on a link that says "TL2009", I
got a file that was TL2008 *and* had no way to know this was TL2008
until the download and unzipping were complete---because the filename
doesn't have the year in it.  I made a suggestion that for 2010,
either: the filename *that one sees in Safari* (in the downloads
window and the status bar) be changed to reflect the year, OR: that
the mactex page clearly state that in clicking on the TL2010 link one
might get the previous year's distro instead.

So to be clear: the complaint is really about signposting.  I wasn't
complaining that there is a lag.  I wasn't "suggesting" that the lag
be made to go away.  I'm perfectly fine with waiting for propagation.
I wasn't asking for a link to a specific mirror that has the real
TL2009.  This is why my suggestion was to make either the first or
third thing vanish; I assumed that there's nothing that can be done
about the second thing.  The other two are issues with labeling.

- epicurus