Uwe Stöhr wrote: > > Do you know why he had problems? > > Yes, he didn't know that the packages are on CTAN and that the .sty-files > are generated by LaTeX out of the .ins/dtx files > > > Or he as an experienced LyX user, but never needed to install latex > > packages so far. Or he did not do it for a long time and forgot how it > > worked. In all these cases a package manager would not help. > > No, exactly in these cases a package manager would help: Open the manager, > search for e.g. prettyref, double click on it and it will be downloaded > and installed.
That assumes that you a) know that this package manager exists b) know or can figure out how to launch and operate it c) it actually works (I guess I don't need to tell you about the miktex download problems). My experience with existing things like that (namely for perl and for php) is that it is quicker and safer to learn how to install packages by hand, because this a) is not limited to packages somebody has prepared for the package manager b) usually the distribution creators don't care for these package managers (because the distribution contains a native package manager for all stuff), and therefore it is not well documented and does not work out of the box. > So you don't need to know the LaTeX internals or the package repositories > but are able to install packages. > Maybe you misunderstood me, I don't mean a package manager for LyX but one > that should be shipped by LaTeX-distributions. That is exactly what I mean, too. It might work for some people, but it is definitely not the right solution for everybody. Georg
