Re: The Future of Debian's TeX packages
Christian> a) do we stick to our own Debian-TeX distribution
Christian> b) should we base our TeX packages on an existing TeX distribution
I am in favour of a), even though it might mean more work. I have used a
very early version of teTeX [1] and also looked at nTeX [2].
However, I also compiled Karl Berry's web2c TeX package --- and this web2c
package takes most of the pain of building TeX on Unix away from you. It
already follows the TeX Directory Standard (TDS). web2c uses the GNU
./configure approach, I don't think that it is too much work to deal with
this as a genuine Debian package. We would have one web2c source which
generates packages as
texbin and mfbin which could go into one big TeX package
xdvik
dvipsk
dviljk
It should be doable to leave control with this central package with one
dedicated maintainer. Other things, which stem from different sources, as
bibtex
makeindex
latex
amstex
amsfonts
babel
...
can be maintained by others.
I feel that if we base our work on teTeX, we loose control over a lot of
decisions that Thomas Esser makes. He also might drop the ball one day (some
people actually graduate ...) and we'll be left with an orphaned system.
I liked teTeX, but mostly because *it came as packaged system* which allowed
installation with a few commands. Debian does that much better. teTeX is for
people who don't have a package management system on their Unix. We have one,
and a very good one. Let's use it with TeX too.
[1] In 1994, I used teTeX on my first Linux box, and then installed it on a
Sparc in the lab in France.
[2] I had looked at it as an alternative to teTeX and found it to much like
slackware, ie too much bundled up.
--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd
--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-devel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com
Reply to: