[XeTeX] texlive and xetex

[Zdenek Wagner]

2014/1/15 François Patte <francois.patte at mi.parisdescartes.fr>:
> Le 14/01/2014 01:10, C. Scott Ananian a écrit :
>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 11:09 AM, François Patte
>> <francois.patte at mi.parisdescartes.fr> wrote:
>>> texlive from linux distributions are often obsolete and they don't
>>> provide the tlmgr tool that allows you to update texlive when you wish
>>> and not when the distro packagers have time to do it!
>>
>> The latest debian and ubuntu contain texlive 2013.  You can't get
>> newer than than unless you have a time machine.
>
>
> Do not say as the truth what you see from *your* window! You are running
> debian sid and what you say is true only for unstable version of debian.
> Stable version offers only TL-2012 and you cannot recommand people to
> install unstable version of their OS only to have TL-2013!
>
That's true. Anyway, a user should decide whether having the latest
TeX Live is really important. Many users will not spot any difference
even if they use a few years old TeX distribution. It depends on your
documents.
>
> Moreover, you claim that apt-get update TL, that's partially true (see
> other posts), but tlmgr does much more than this! For instance: you can
> get info on specific latex packages... Have look to the tlmgr man  pages
> for more features.
>
If the latest TeX Live is not what you need, you may be satisfied with
updating by apt-get or yum or whatever the Linux distro offers. If you
work mostly with TeX, this may be undesirable. Suppose you work on a
document that must be finished soon and you are not allowed to delay.
Now a security update arrives (maybe a kernel vulnerability is being
fixed). You update your distro in order to get the security fix but
your TeX will be updated too and due to some side effects the document
will no longer compile. This will be a nightmare. If you have TeX Live
from TUG, you can accept the security update without affecting TeX. I
know what i am talking about. Such things happened to me several times
but I always update by tlmgr only when I have enough time to solve
them.
>
> Another thing: tlmgr allows a "user mode" which allows a "simple" user
> to manage their own texlive tree on their account; on a multi-user
> system, not every user has an access to root and can run apt-get!
>
>
> I know that for debian users, debian is a god, but only for them! Do not
> talk rubbish!
>
>
> --
> François Patte
> UFR de mathématiques et informatique
> Laboratoire CNRS MAP5, UMR 8145
> Université Paris Descartes
> 45, rue des Saints Pères
> F-75270 Paris Cedex 06
> Tél. +33 (0)1 8394 5849
> http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~patte
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz