Re: Future versions of teTeX, and TeXlive as a replacement

[Rogério Brito <rbrito@ime.usp.br>]

Hi, Ralf and Co.

On 05/30/06 10:46, Ralf Stubner wrote:
> On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 18:47 -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> > Sorry for the very late reply. I'm trying to catch up with d-t-m@l.d.o
> > right now. 
>
> It probably is the right time to discuss these things again, now that it
> is official that Thomas won't make another teTeX release.

Nice that I'm not that late. :-)

> > For instance, the packages that I use the most are (from memory):
> >
> > inputenc
> > fontenc
> > babel
> > ifpdf
> > geometry
> > hyperref
> > graphicx
> > eso-pic
> > amsthm
> > amssymb
> > amsmath
> > xspace
> > algorithm
> > algorithmic
>
> I think all but the last two packages are in tl-latex-base or
> tl-latex-recommended, which is good, because all these packages are
> important and often used. I think the seletion in these two packages is
> allready quite good and based on popularity.

I don't remember what I got (my memory has been playing tricks on me lately), 
but I do remember having to grab some -extra (texlive) packages to get the 
things that I needed. Some of the contents of the packages didn't made much 
sense to me, at least. But I believe when you say that the division is already 
based on "popularity".

> algorithm(ic) is more difficult, though, since it needs tl-latex-extra
> which is larger than 100M. The other really large packages are
> tl-fonts-extra (about 90M) and tl-doc-en (50M, installed by default!).
>
> IMHO these three packages are candidates for further splitting and/or
> reorganization.

Agreed. BTW, I usually don't install the -doc package of tetex. I only grab it 
whenever I need reference (I keep a local debian tree here of already downloaded 
packages---via apt-move).

> To use your example, I have never used algorithm(ic) and have only a faint 
idea of what it
> might be used for.

I'd say that it is one of the more popular packages for typesetting pseudo-coded 
algorithms, based on the feedback that I get. For a "minor" thing in TeX 
distributions, I think that it gets quite a good amount of usage (I didn't 
expect it to be as popular when I decided to adopt it).

> > I also like to use the following for changing things in my documents:
> >
> > mathptmx/mathpazo
> > txfonts/pxfonts
> > fancyhdr
>
> All these are (or will be) part of the packages installed by 'texlive'.
> I think that's fine, although i could live without [pt]xfonts, since
> they are way to tightly kerned.

Well, having them would be nice, but if mathp{tmx,azo} are available, then the 
necessity of having them available would be far lower.

> > euler
> > beton
>
> IIRC it would be better to use eulervm and ccfonts, both written by
> Walter Schmidt who really knows how math fonts in LaTeX (should) work.

Thanks for the recommendations. I will check them out (for some reason, I have 
the faint memory of already having used them and settled for the euler/beton 
pair, but I can't remember why, since it was so long ago). I didn't know that 
euler.sty was "deprecated" (after reading briefly the description of eulervm).

> Anyway, the packages in Debian are closely related to the collections
> provided by upstream. So any changes would probably be better done
> there.

Indeed, so that the maintainers of the Debian packaging don't have to fight 
against packaging with the upstream choices.

It would be nice to know how open the upstream texlive team is to suggestions 
from users and system administrators regarding the recommended spplitting...


Thanks for your feedback, Rogério.

--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@ime.usp.br : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
Homepage on freshmeat:  http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/