Bug#173872: tetex-bin: spurious dependency on perl-tk
From: Josip Rodin <joy@gkvk.hr>
Subject: Re: Bug#173872: tetex-bin: spurious dependency on perl-tk
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 16:22:46 +0100
> > > we had a tex system like this up to Debian 1.2 containing up to 20
> > > packages, but because of the complex dependencies it was not really
> > > working this way. So the decission was, to adopt TeTeX because of its
> > > good design and stability. If we again try to separate it in small
> > > pieces I fear we get the same mess as before. So my answer is, rather
> > > don't do it.
>
> That's all fine and well, but it was written in 1999, and is referring to
> something that happened in 1996.
No, it is not old story. It is a main spirit or good design
or excellent feature of teTeX to provide integrated and consistent
TeX system. This is definitely true even today.
In fact, it is a very difficult work to create TeX system
in which every binaries work consistently without problem.
TeX system consists of binaries and their supporting stuffs,
like configuration files and/or various kind of fonts (TFM,
PK, Type1, VF etc.) and all of them should be consistent.
> Surely we have to advance since those ancient times, instead of regress?
> At least _try_ to do it. Otherwise we sink even further into the realm of
> mediocrity[1], and there's plenty of that among Linux distributions already.
If we consider advance, the contrary way could also be a
real advance.
Considering the importance of PDF and/or Type1 fonts, for
example, I guess that to unify tetex-base and tetex-extra
to one package tetex-base is very reasonable and advanced
packaging, at least for daily TeX users.
(Theoretically, this is the best packaging.)
I suspect that only reason of splitting teTeX-texmf into
tetex-base and tetex-extra is historical one.
Further, there are even requests to add some components to
tetex packages (cf. #31897, #99154, #105333, #129758 and we
have gotten requests in debian-tetex-maint ML directly).
That is, this issue heavily depends on users and it needs
very grave/common/reasonable reason (instead of unnecessary
nor small disk space) to split tetex into a few componets.
Thanks, 2002.12.25(Wed)
--
Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@debian.org>
Department of Math., Univ. of Tokushima
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