[tex-live] Personal opinion to Mactex 2009

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 1:24 PM, YANG weiwei<yangweiwei0127 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I have installed the pretest release of Mactex2009, and just found
> that TeXworks were shipped together, I just tried it and compare it
> with TeXShop.
>
> In my opinion, TeXworks is not so perfect to be part of mactex2009, It
> may be incluede in the mactex extras, but should not be included in
> mactex. TeXworks is naive, Although it  may provides a good experience
> on other platform, it is not as good as TeXShop on Mac. It still haves
> a long way to go to compete with TeXShop.
>
> Does anyone else think so?

MacTeX has in the past offered TeX Live "plus" (extra stuff).  I don't
see any reason
that should change, but there are major benefits to TeX Live that
includes all the tools
users to need perform basic tasks on the various platforms.  TeXworks
is important:
a) many users are unwilling (perhaps after some bad experiences with the
windows command line) to use command-line tools and b) many users are unclear
about the distinction between TeX and the editing environment.
Editing environments
are very personal, which is a challenge for anyone teaching or
supporting TeX users
as it is impossible to be expert on all the environments you
encounter.   By providing
a lowest common denominator environment, we have something that can be used in
courses and teaching labs, to fill in when the user's favorite
environment has broken,
and that can be used when helping someone using an unfamiliar environment.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia