[tex-live] too many files

Sebastian Rahtz sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Tue, 26 Feb 2002 08:57:18 +0000


On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 10:59:46AM +0530, Radhakrishnan CV wrote:
> 
> What I would suggest is to retain the current format of TeXLive, 
> ie., ready to run system for many platforms in a single CD. Most of 
> the users may not need support, goodies, web2c, sources, editors, 
> etc. We should judiciously scale down a working TeX system and burn 
> that in the first CD which is comprehensive enough to run.

ah, now you come to the central problem. which is the question 
of *how* to scale down the system. if you are a CJK person,
that package is basic, for instance, though it is not for me.
If we cut it down, we are simply teTeX as it stands
 
> The second CD can hold all the packages of advanced nature,
> sparingly used fonts (for instance indic scripts), support, goodies,
> web2c, sources, editors tree and the relevant documentation.
sorry, but you are making value judgements like "advanced" and "sparingly"
which I cannot agree with

> should provide friendly scripts to install anything that is 
> included in the second CD easily.
and here is a the second problem. who will write these install
scripts? after 7 years at this game, the Unix side of the TL
is still using the shell script which Thomas wrote for TL1.
why? because no-one has come up with anything to replace it,
and I at least am not equipped to do so. Yes, we all have ideas
on how it should/could be done, but fine words butter no parsnips
as my mother used to say....


> While scaling down to make a runnable TeX system, some of the
> packages like pdfscreen, pdftricks, pdfslide can be moved to the CD
> No. 2.  Obviously users can install any of these items easily if
> they like.

we have 805 packages at present. who'd like to volunteer to classify them?
 
>    8068	Master/texmf/web2c
> ==> CD 2

you dont mean that, I suspect. its where the basic config file is :-}
 
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Sebastian Rahtz      OUCS Information Manager
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