nov 15 tds...

[David Carlisle]

    1) Try to get anyone who is writing to the new TDS to provide a
    "remove" script for each platform on which the package can exist.

> I know I wrote text to suggest this, but it seems to have
> disappeared. Maybe it was in the now-defunct Martian section. Anyway,
> I'll put it back.

I do not see how it is reasonable to ask that package authors supply
such scripts.

I know something about TeX and a little about unix. So how should I
write install/remove scripts for Macintosh, VMS, Atari.... I recently
helped someone write a texsys.cfg file for an Achimedes which was bad
enough not knowing anything about the file structure there except that
it used . as the directory separator, (just to make life fun:-). If I had
had to provide a script in an Archimedes scripting language (if it has
such a thing) I dont think I could have started.

Having automatic remove/install scripts would be nice, but given the
portable nature of TeX it does not seem practical to me. Of course
such scripts tend to be very simple so it may make sense to distribute
scripts in sh or REX or perl or something  with the hope that porting
to a TDS compliant setup on another machine would then be
easy. However you can not expect the original package authors to know 
more than a couple of operating systems. 

David