Re: teTeX: no next release
On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 15:01 +0200, Jindrich Novy wrote: To give you an example, before the FC5 release I was asked whether I can move tetex-doc to Extras what contains all the documentation in the texmf tree so that it can be removed from Core, because the tetex-doc RPM has more than 50M in size. I refused that of course. But there's a hard pressure to make it smaller even if the total size of all teTeX rpms is about 110M. Ouch. OK - I just looked at why the TeX Live based packages I'm experimenting with produce much bigger doc and fonts package. I went through Fedora teTeX and only grabbed zip files from TeX Live that provided something that Fedora had. It seems that TeX Live has a lot of documentation that teTeX did not have, and it also seems that lot of documentation that teTeX had has dvi files, TeX Live has as PDF - and there is not a dvi file to justify deletion of the PDF. Just a random example - the totpages.dvi file in tetex 3 is about 28kb and the totpages.pdf file in tex live is about 200kb, ~ 8x the size. Also - the packaging I did results in about 150 more .pfb files. It looks like Thomas did some serious pruning with teTeX that has not been done with TeX Live. I wonder if debian has any statistics on which tex live packages are most requested by their users, so intelligent pruning to extras could be done.
Re: teTeX: no next release
Hello Giuseppe and others, You describe a serious problem, that - I think - can be solved: Please don't misunderstand me. I've not said that TL is bad or I'm blaming it. I've only said that it contains much more things than a typical teTeX user needs. Regarding packages QA, I don't mean a typical single package updates, but usability and conflicts when grouped/used together. If we for instance hold a tree where we keep ALL the CTAN LaTeX styles/macros, then how to check there won't be conflicts when used together? For instance I've styles A version 1.0 B version 1.1 C version 1.2 which are the latest styles available. Then B will be upgraded to version 1.5, then we'll obtain a new tree: A version 1.1 B version 1.5 C version 1.2 but for instance style C version 1.2 is no longer able to work with B version 1.1 and give some error. How to check all these kind of conflicts? This might be easy if the number of packages|styles is small, but as number grows and the update become modular this become very difficult, especially if the tree maybe is upgraded always and quickly to the latest version. There already are various elegant (and intelligent) solutions for this problem. Examples of such solutions would be the Gentoo portage system and the *BSD make world system. An entire OS with thousands of applications is managed effectively this way, solving teh dependency problems. SOme of the drawbacks these systems have will not even exist with TeX. I'll describe the Gentoo system in a few lines, as it is the system I'm most familiar with, and will suffice as an example. I will also add TeX-related notes. Gentoo portage is a collection of shell scripts that a) maintain a database of programs , graphics, etc. that can potentially be installed. (TeX: base system + style files + add-on packages + fonts, etc.) In this databse is noted for each program: - current version(s): multiple versions of packages can be on file, and can in some cases even be installed simultaneously in order to deal with dependency issues - whether a user wants stable or cutting edge development versions (overall setting with, possibly, per-package variation) - architectures it is available for (i.e. processor type). For TeX this would be the TeX variety: plain, LaTeX, amstex, context, metafont, etc. - dependencies (i.e. which other packages are required) which includes version information (e.g. requires package A, AND any package B older than 1.2, AND (any C version 3.2 or newer OR (C-3.0 or C-3.1 AND D)) - incompatibilities (package X and Y are incompatible), or package X and package Y newer than 2.1 are incompatible, or... b) update the database from any of a large number of servers (TeX: CTAN) c) install and delete programs, checking dependencies and incompatibilities. Programs are then marked as installed (with version number) or uninstalled for resolving dependencies. d) deal with source as well as binary installs. This system, or the similar *BSD make world system could handle teTeX / TeXlive package management easily. Distribution maintainers have to note that new versions are available, update the database and check if it works. After extensive community testing (and perhaps a bugzilla-like systsem for reportign errors) final adjustments are made to dependencies and incompatibilities if needed, and the new package or new version is marked stable. These systems have been shown to work, and several user-friendly GUIs exist for some, if not all of them. They has a long and succesful track record including on software distributions that are one to two orders of magnitude larger than TeX-Live. Maintainers as well as users are happy. The main drawback is the compilation time of large packages on these systems when working completely from source (which is optional for many packages anyway), but TeX-Live doesn't contain all that many large packages, plus compilation is generally limited to - say - LaTeX-ing the .ins and .dtx files. And, as has been said, the system can deal with pre-compiled binaries as easily as with source code. So any package can be offered as a pre-compiled binary for the system of chocie as well as as sourcecode. Of course the main hurdle when using this for TeXlive would be creating the initial database: this will cost many, many man-hours. But we have a large community, many people might want to contribute (in fact: it is not uncommon in Gentoo that end users supply so-called ebuilds to developers for incusion in the database) Please realise I am not necessarily advocating the use of portage per se: I am advocating the use of any such system: there are many, and I think the _general concept_ is exactly what we need: which specific implementation of the concept we could best use should perhaps not be discussed until it has been decided whether or not the concept itself will be used at all. Comments,
Re: teTeX: no next release
Giuseppe == Giuseppe Ghibò [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Note also that the teTeX's Thomas work is far beyond than a specific single platform (although Linux is the widespread one, there are still support for plenty of other architectures which maybe in these days are not so much widespread, but still used [e.g. SGI, HP/UX, etc. and that many of us don't have access to anymore]). TeXLive also supports plenty of platforms. Thomas said that teTeX is 100% in TeXLive. Hence, teTeX did't support any platform which is not supported by TeXLive. TeXLive supports Windows, teTeX didn't. I've seen the tetexrpm initiative and that's good, although, I'm scared of having zillion of packages on for each LaTeX style of 100kbytes long. Better a single base and an extra. In TeXLive you can choose the packages you want to install. I don't understand what you want. If you want something small, TeXLive is the best choice because you can install only the packages you need. What is the benefit of a single base and an extra? What should go into the base? But if you need a single base and an extra, it's no problem, the TL install script already supports things like that. IMHO I suggest to continue the Tomas's monolitic model (on the other hand it's pretty good) rather than reinventing the wheel with something of modular, TeXLive is modular already, who has to reinvent the wheel? but just having it with public cvs/svn access (i.e. with permission of committing to a group of developers), rather than migrating the whole TeXlive tree. I'm not sure I understand you correctly. TeXLive development is quite open. The TL development tree is in svn, you can become a developer if you want, you can get it with rsync if you only want to download it, all you need is a web browser to look into it, and everybody is encouraged to help. There will be a tree for texmf tree and one for texmfsrc. IMHO there should be some mechanism of quality checking/approving/testing rather than just put there every single bell and whistle of LaTeX styles around in CTAN. Sorry, but it is unfair to blame TL developers to put everything into TL which is on CTAN without beeing concerned about quality. Of course, they are very concerned about quality. They cannot test everything but everybody is invited to help. Maybe every six months instead of one year there could be a release of the tetexsrc tree (with some RC before). And maybe every one year of the tetex tree. There could be three or for TeXLive releases per year if more people would volunteer. I think that the tetexrpm project is a good thing if it depends on TeXLive somehow. Let's try to make TL as good as possible and then derive everything else from it. (I don't think he will abandon tetex as end user...). Why should he prefer teTeX over TeXLive? He doesn't maintain teTeX any more and he said that teTeX is 100% in TeXLive, and he knows the TeXLive developers very well. He knows that they are concerned about reliability as well. Regards, Reinhard -- Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-4592165 Marschnerstr. 25 D-30167 Hannover mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
Re: teTeX: no next release
Axel Thimm wrote: Does this mean, that this is still the case? E.g. is TeXLive still modular to allow shaping a subset compared to what teTeX offers today? Yes, very much so. It describes 84 collections, containing 1079 packages. The metadata about these is in a series of XML files. eg here is the defintion for the chemistry collection: !DOCTYPE rdf:RDF SYSTEM ../../support/tpm.dtd rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#; xmlns:TPM=http://texlive.dante.de/; rdf:Description about=http://texlive.dante.de/texlive/TLCore/collection-chemistry.zip; TPM:Namecollection-chemistry/TPM:Name TPM:TypeTLCore/TPM:Type TPM:Date1970/01/01 00:00:00/TPM:Date TPM:Version/TPM:Version TPM:Creatorrahtz/TPM:Creator TPM:TitleChemical typesetting/TPM:Title TPM:DescriptionEssential chemistry/TPM:Description TPM:Author/TPM:Author TPM:Size1228/TPM:Size TPM:Build TPM:RunPatternstexmf/tpm/collection-chemistry.tpm/TPM:RunPatterns /TPM:Build TPM:RunFiles size=1228texmf/tpm/collection-chemistry.tpm/TPM:RunFiles TPM:Requires TPM:Package name=bpchem/ TPM:Package name=chemarrow/ TPM:Package name=chemcompounds/ TPM:Package name=chemcono/ TPM:Package name=chemsym/ TPM:Package name=mhchem/ TPM:Package name=xymtex/ TPM:TLCore name=collection-basic/ /TPM:Requires TPM:ProvidesTLCore/collection-chemistry/TPM:Provides /rdf:Description /rdf:RDF and so on In general would you (or the TeXLive maintainers in general) consider offering a set of sources with size/functionality similar to today's teTeX? If so then that would probably please everyone! :) if you can work out which collection of packages equates to teTeX, its relatively easy. There are no secrets in this, its all just sitting there in the TL Subversion, anyone can do what they want with it. But if there would be say a program source tarball, a basic TeXLive texmf tarball (which compares in size/functionality to teTeX) and a tarball containing all the rest, then Fedora Core would ship the first two on the media and keep the third in the Fedora Extras repository where size doesn't matter. that would be doable. I hasten to add that I haven't done any real work on TL myself for a couple of years, and I am not volunteering to assist on projects like this, but I do believe that if you look at Norbert Preining's script which takes TL and builds a set of Debian packages from it, it would be a work of a few weeks to get the RPMs you want. -- Sebastian Rahtz Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431 OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
Re: teTeX: no next release
Hi, On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 20:59 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote: Just to give a distribution specific example: Fedora Core would probably reject any dramatic increase in a monolithic substitution. Yes, as the teTeX maintainer in Red Hat I can say that it's very unlikely that it's possible to include a larger teTeX replacement into the distribution because of the size of Fedora Core keeps growing and release engineers have hard time to fit all the stuff on a finite number of ISOs... To give you an example, before the FC5 release I was asked whether I can move tetex-doc to Extras what contains all the documentation in the texmf tree so that it can be removed from Core, because the tetex-doc RPM has more than 50M in size. I refused that of course. But there's a hard pressure to make it smaller even if the total size of all teTeX rpms is about 110M. It would most likely lead to a Fedora-specific split of the texmf tarball (since some parts are needed for the documentation of other packages) and users, as well as TeXLive maintainers would be irritated by that. What makes me think about some even more minimalistic texmf variant that only contains some essential part of a texmf tree? But if there would be say a program source tarball, a basic TeXLive texmf tarball (which compares in size/functionality to teTeX) and a tarball containing all the rest, then Fedora Core would ship the first two on the media and keep the third in the Fedora Extras repository where size doesn't matter. Considering that the Extras part of texmf tree would be much harder to maintain since it contains everything that didn't fit into the basic part, the one-year release period for it would be fine. On the other hand it would be easier to release the minimalistic variant of the texmf tree more often then as the update that is needed to be shipped to the users won't be that huge. Jindrich P.S. Thanks again to Thomas for maintaining teTeX up to now. -- Jindrich Novy [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://people.redhat.com/jnovy/ (o_ _o) //\ The worst evil in the world is refusal to think. //\ V_/_ _\_V
Re: teTeX: no next release
Axel Thimm wrote: But if there would be say a program source tarball, a basic TeXLive texmf tarball (which compares in size/functionality to teTeX) and a tarball containing all the rest, then Fedora Core would ship the first two on the media and keep the third in the Fedora Extras repository where size doesn't matter. The problem is not only the RPMing but also for endusers who uses it. If I split the tree for instance in 100 subpackages one for each style then it might arise two problems: - an end user who don't really cares about packages TDS or whatever is related to installation, but simply it uses the (te)TeX system someone (syadamin) has installed for him. If he has to install (or ask to the sysadmin) for for each typical package he needs, then it start to become difficult. - On the other hand installing everything (e.g. I provide a virtual RPM package which might include every style subpackage) might be too much for most of users. For instance it install a lot of fonts and styles for languages that he even never heard of (consider also from point of view of internal teTeX mem arrays). teTeX IMHO was reasonable on both sides providing enough styles in the basic system for a typical user, so that required packages to be installed manually (because not provided) was then a few models can be provided: - tetex base: same styles|macros as tetex - extras: more but not everything - huge: more macro packages but not of typical usage (es. MusixTeX, etc.) - all (everything). or still with further levels. Bye Giuseppe.
Re: teTeX: no next release
Reinhard Kotucha ha scritto: Axel == Axel Thimm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Maybe the whole load of it is too much for one person and therefore a tetex developer group is needed? If a critical mass is gathered maybe it has a chance. I could offer infrastructure for collaborative work (trac/svn etc.). As Thomas said, teTeX is 100% in TeXLive. So why do we need a tetex developer group? TeXLive and teTeX are the same thing. The main reason teTeX is discontinued is that it is too much work to maintain the texmf tree and that different people are working on the same thing. What you propose means to waste human resources. The teTeX developer group and the TeXLive developers would still work on the same thing. Are you aware that TeXLive is developed by only two people? If you find someone who is willing to spend a vast amount of his spare time to maintain a texmf tree, ask him to contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. The reason for teTeX's reliability is that Thomas is one of the best shell programmers worldwide. You cannot simply replace him by a tetex developer group and expect the same quality. And though teTeX is discontinued, it is not dead. Thomas is still alive and will help if necessary. I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Do you realy think that people care about who has written all the nice software they are using? Are you subscribed to the texhax mailing list? I'm using WinEDT and get the error message '! TeX capacity exceeded' They do not even know that they are using TeX! But if you look into the TeXLive sources, you'll see where it all comes from. Note that the name TeXLive still contains Thomas Esser's initials. Regards, Reinhard I maintain a small tree of packages (which adds or changes the tetex default tetex-src), that I use in Mandriva teTeX's SPEC file/package I maintain; here is: http://peoples.mandriva.com/~ghibo/tetex-texmf-extras-gg-3.0d.tar.bz2 http://peoples.mandriva.com/~ghibo/tetex-texmfsrc-extras-gg-3.0d.tar.bz2 Soon I'll update to 3.0e with latest (december) LaTeX base files. Maybe can be merged in a upcoming teTeX tree. Note also that the teTeX's Thomas work is far beyond than a specific single platform (although Linux is the widespread one, there are still support for plenty of other architectures which maybe in these days are not so much widespread, but still used [e.g. SGI, HP/UX, etc. and that many of us don't have access to anymore]). I've seen the tetexrpm initiative and that's good, although, I'm scared of having zillion of packages on for each LaTeX style of 100kbytes long. Better a single base and an extra. IMHO I suggest to continue the Tomas's monolitic model (on the other hand it's pretty good) rather than reinventing the wheel with something of modular, but just having it with public cvs/svn access (i.e. with permission of committing to a group of developers), rather than migrating the whole TeXlive tree. There will be a tree for texmf tree and one for texmfsrc. IMHO there should be some mechanism of quality checking/approving/testing rather than just put there every single bell and whistle of LaTeX styles around in CTAN. Maybe every six months instead of one year there could be a release of the tetexsrc tree (with some RC before). And maybe every one year of the tetex tree. In this way maybe also Thomas may, from time to time, have a look to (I don't think he will abandon tetex as end user...). Bye Giuseppe.
Re: teTeX: no next release
David == David Kastrup [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm using WinEDT and get the error message '! TeX capacity exceeded' They do not even know that they are using TeX! Why would they then complain to texhax? I'm wondering as well, I don't know why. But messages like this appear at least once per month on texhax. Regards, Reinhard -- Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-4592165 Marschnerstr. 25 D-30167 Hannover mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
Re: teTeX: no next release
Axel Thimm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: teTeX and TeXLive have very different target groups. teTeX targets simple configure/make/make install Unix setups. TeXLive is a ready-to-run media with the ability to copy over unix/windows/mac binaries to your hard disk or run them from the DVD. That is a difference in packaging only. The binaries on the TeX Live discs are build like this. Hence it shouldn't be a big problem to offer a 'tetex-src' tarball based on the TeX Live sources. The larger difference is wrt to the TEXMF tree. And IMHO this is also the crucial point where decisions for any 'teTeX successor' have to be made. I don't think that continuing with a large monolitic TEXMF tree is a good idea. I see two interesting possiblities: * Go over to the TeX Live team and help them. Add something like the 'tetex-src' tarball as a regular form of distributing the programs in TeX Live. Define a subset of the TeX Live TEXMF tree to get something like a 'tetex-texmf' tarball. Add RPMs etc for different Linux distributions. * Use sources from TeX Live but start a new TEXMF tree. This tree would be *minimal* but would have the advantage that each and every file in it has been license audited. Of course, this tree should use something like the TPM file mechanism from TeX Live to define which files belong together. Since the TEXMF tree offers only the bare minimum, something like the MikTeX package manager mpm would be needed to install additional packages. cheerio ralf
Re: teTeX: no next release
On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 09:34:23PM +0200, Thomas Esser wrote: -- tetex-src is 100% in TeXLive Yes. -- tetex-texmf is mostly a subset of TeXLive but I suspect the latter to be much bigger (I may be wrong; haven't downloaded or used ever); Almost all of the texmf content in teTeX and TeX Live have CTAN as primary source. That makes the trees so similar. teTeX's tree is much much smaller: TeX Live: = $ cd /t/texlive/Master/ $ du -ms texmf* 46 texmf 940 texmf-dist 122 texmf-doc 11 texmf-var $ find texmf* -type f | wc 55165 55165 2516019 teTeX = $ cd /t/src/tetex-texmf $ du -ms . 278 . $ find . -type f | wc 15634 15634 573300 Would it make sense to have a common project out of which both are cut from? E.g. tagging some parts of the texmf tree as tetex/minimal and the rest is texlive/maximal? texmf is one of the bigger packages in distros and currently they all try to become Ubuntu-like small. Replacing tetex's texmf with texlive's might make some texnicians happy at first, but almost certainly will make vendors get their machetas out and criple it to only offer the supportive bits they need for creating the distro's documenation. -- Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net pgpGRjsMfT0W5.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: teTeX: no next release
Axel Thimm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 01:17:43AM +0200, Reinhard Kotucha wrote: As Thomas said, teTeX is 100% in TeXLive. So why do we need a tetex developer group? TeXLive and teTeX are the same thing. The main reason teTeX is discontinued is that it is too much work to maintain the texmf tree and that different people are working on the same thing. teTeX and TeXLive have very different target groups. teTeX targets simple configure/make/make install Unix setups. TeXLive is a ready-to-run media with the ability to copy over unix/windows/mac binaries to your hard disk or run them from the DVD. But the teTeX within TeXLive does just the same. The difference will be that the tetex texmf tree will no longer be available separately. For installations tight on space, a TeXLive minimal might be desirable at one time. Are you subscribed to the texhax mailing list? I'm using WinEDT and get the error message '! TeX capacity exceeded' They do not even know that they are using TeX! Why would they then complain to texhax? Note that the name TeXLive still contains Thomas Esser's initials. Thanks, now I know what TeX means. Thomas Esser's X11R8. What does Live stand for? Liars invent vunny ecronyms. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
Re: teTeX: no next release
On Thu, 25 May 2006, Reinhard Kotucha wrote: Axel == Axel Thimm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Maybe the whole load of it is too much for one person and therefore a tetex developer group is needed? If a critical mass is gathered maybe it has a chance. I could offer infrastructure for collaborative work (trac/svn etc.). As Thomas said, teTeX is 100% in TeXLive. So why do we need a tetex developer group? TeXLive and teTeX are the same thing. The main reason teTeX is discontinued is that it is too much work to maintain the texmf tree and that different people are working on the same thing. As far as I can tell: -- tetex-src is 100% in TeXLive -- tetex-texmf is mostly a subset of TeXLive but I suspect the latter to be much bigger (I may be wrong; haven't downloaded or used ever); -- things like texmf/doc/tetex/TETEXDOC.pdf are not in TeX Live and do not seem to have an equivalent; documentation for TeXLive looks much more generic (which is quite understandable). Can someone be a bit more precise? One of things I appreciated in tetex was the texmf tree not being complete but a being a very reasonable default. -- João Palhoto Matos http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~jmatos Departamento de Matemática Instituto Superior Técnico Lisboa mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: teTeX: no next release
-- tetex-src is 100% in TeXLive Yes. -- tetex-texmf is mostly a subset of TeXLive but I suspect the latter to be much bigger (I may be wrong; haven't downloaded or used ever); Almost all of the texmf content in teTeX and TeX Live have CTAN as primary source. That makes the trees so similar. teTeX's tree is much much smaller: TeX Live: = $ cd /t/texlive/Master/ $ du -ms texmf* 46 texmf 940 texmf-dist 122 texmf-doc 11 texmf-var $ find texmf* -type f | wc 55165 55165 2516019 teTeX = $ cd /t/src/tetex-texmf $ du -ms . 278 . $ find . -type f | wc 15634 15634 573300 -- things like texmf/doc/tetex/TETEXDOC.pdf are not in TeX Live and do not seem to have an equivalent; documentation for TeXLive looks much more generic (which is quite understandable). TETEXDOC.pdf is part of teTeX's (and TeX Live's) source tree. So, if you don't use the precompiled binaries of TeX Live, but the sources and run ./configure; make; make install then, you will get an installed TETEXDOC.pdf. Thomas
Re: teTeX: no next release
Axel == Axel Thimm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Maybe the whole load of it is too much for one person and therefore a tetex developer group is needed? If a critical mass is gathered maybe it has a chance. I could offer infrastructure for collaborative work (trac/svn etc.). As Thomas said, teTeX is 100% in TeXLive. So why do we need a tetex developer group? TeXLive and teTeX are the same thing. The main reason teTeX is discontinued is that it is too much work to maintain the texmf tree and that different people are working on the same thing. What you propose means to waste human resources. The teTeX developer group and the TeXLive developers would still work on the same thing. Are you aware that TeXLive is developed by only two people? If you find someone who is willing to spend a vast amount of his spare time to maintain a texmf tree, ask him to contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. The reason for teTeX's reliability is that Thomas is one of the best shell programmers worldwide. You cannot simply replace him by a tetex developer group and expect the same quality. And though teTeX is discontinued, it is not dead. Thomas is still alive and will help if necessary. I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Do you realy think that people care about who has written all the nice software they are using? Are you subscribed to the texhax mailing list? I'm using WinEDT and get the error message '! TeX capacity exceeded' They do not even know that they are using TeX! But if you look into the TeXLive sources, you'll see where it all comes from. Note that the name TeXLive still contains Thomas Esser's initials. Regards, Reinhard -- Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-4592165 Marschnerstr. 25 D-30167 Hannover mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
Re: teTeX: no next release
Hi Thomas, On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 10:38:21AM +0200, Thomas Esser wrote: I am sorry to announce some bad news about teTeX: there won't be a next release. To be more precise: there won't be a next release done by me. sorry to hear that, we've all gotten spoiled by the ease of tetex. The elder folks among us remember the times before tetex, and we remember mostly that we'd like to forget about them. :) Thanks a lot for all these trouble-free years of texing! I hope tetex will be picked up and maintained under the same name and quality. Maybe the whole load of it is too much for one person and therefore a tetex developer group is needed? If a critical mass is gathered maybe it has a chance. I could offer infrastructure for collaborative work (trac/svn etc.). -- Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net pgpKNfzGofiXg.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: teTeX: no next release
On Monday, May 22, 2006, at 02:53AM, Thomas Esser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I am sorry to announce some bad news about teTeX: there won't be a next release. To be more precise: there won't be a next release done by me. *snip* The source tree of teTeX-3.0 is included 100% in TeX Live (http://www.tug.org/texlive/) which is released once per year. So, there is no doubt for me that all the stuff that is now included in the source tarball will be maintained actively. There are some parts which have been originally written by me (scripts such as updmap, texconfig, fmtutil) and I think that it won't be a problem for me to continue to maintain these things (and submit updates into the TeX Live repository). The texmf tree of teTeX is a monolitic distribution of individual CTAN packages. I am unsure if someone else wants to maintain such a monolitic monster package. I am sure that it would be much better to set up a package based infrastructure, such as MikTeX's. This infrastructure was recently ported to Linux, so using this might be a good start. Another possible source of information about creating TeX packages is again TeX Live. The work done there can be used to create debian packages in a mostly automated way. I've started an rpm specific package repository, which is at http://www.tetexrpm.org/ for the noarch texmf stuff. Just recently, sourceforge approved the project for housing the rpm spec files there - project name is tetexrpm. I have not uploaded any files yet, but the point of using sourceforge is to make it easy for other people to contribute by adding/updating the spec files for the individual macro packages from CTAN. If there is any interest whatsoever from people on this list helping out with that, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm certainly open to changing how things are done in tetexrpm if there is a need to do so. perhaps the binary parts of tetex can be packaged in rpm from TeX Live, and the texmf as rpms from the CTAN .zip files. Something similar to tetex could then be achieved via yum/apt groups so that a groupinstall can pull in the necessary macro packages. Thoughts comments?
Re: teTeX: no next release
On 5/22/06, Thomas Esser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am sorry to announce some bad news about teTeX: there won't be a next release. To be more precise: there won't be a next release done by me. I have often been asked We need a new unix/linux system, which of these can run TeX?, to which I could confidently reply: teTeX can easily be installed on any of the systems you are considering. Your contribution has been far greater than can reasonably be expected from any one individual. So while I feel a sense of loss in that teTeX may fall into the care of less capabable hands, there is also a sense of relief. Whether or not there are more releases of teTeX, your work provides the foundation for a significant fraction of active TeX installations, including those used by many of the people who are actively working to improve TeX. It was an impressive effort and a significant contribution to the scientific community, among others. Recognition and rewards often pass over people who just quietly get on with making things better, but you can take enormous satisfaction from the fact that your efforts not only will have lasting benefits for TeX users around the world but also provide an example for others. -- George N. White III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
Re: teTeX: no next release
thomas -- thanks for announcing in good time: i guess we'll all go full circle and switch to tex-live which (iirc) started with tetex as one of its bases. i would like to echo the (deserved) fulsome praise you've already received from so many people: i've always found tetex a solid and reliable platform to work with. cheers, robin
Re: teTeX: no next release
Thomas Esser escribió: Hi, I am sorry to announce some bad news about teTeX: there won't be a next release. To be more precise: there won't be a next release done by me. Just to say a big thank you Thomas for your work and time all these years. I hope that teTeX will find mantainers, that will keep your name and recognition alive. Best regards, Luis Seidel __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo. Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto. http://es.voice.yahoo.com
