Re: EuroBachoTeX 2007 paper
Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> If you find a bit of time today, can you take a look at the attached
> article I want to bring to the EuroBachoTeX 2007, which will also the
> base of the talk.
Arrgh, I sent my last mail which should have been the beginning of a
longer one. Shouldn't write e-mail while listening to the radio news...
I think the document is quite good and covers the important issues.
Let's go on with the nitpicking:
- In the Rationale section, you name the conffile thing and the reusing
of separately packaged stuff. Isn't the possibility of installing
only parts of texlive-full, while not using the texlive installer (and
hence the need for updmap.d, fmt.d etc.) an other important reason?
- User-specific texmf.cnf file do not work out of the box. One needs to
set the environment file TEXMFCNF so that it contains the path (or
paths) for all texmf.cnf files you want. By the way, IIRC this is
still undocumented in TeX-on-Debian.
A patch with some spelling and grammar suggestions is attached.
Regards, Frank
--
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
--- texondebian.tex.orig 2007-04-25 18:36:15.000000000 +0200
+++ texondebian.tex 2007-04-25 18:35:57.000000000 +0200
@@ -78,17 +78,18 @@
We all are very grateful to Thomas and wish him all the best for his
further plans!
-\section{Rational of Debian specific changes}
+\section{Rationale of Debian specific changes}
-As a big distribution Debian obliges packages maintainers to prepare their
+As a big distribution Debian obliges package maintainers to prepare their
packages in such a way that (besides other things)
\begin{itemize}
-\item configuration files must be placed into the \path{/etc/texmf} hierarchy,
-\item and changes to configuration files are preserved during upgrade, but
+\item configuration files must be placed into the \path{/etc/texmf}
+ hierarchy, and
+\item changes to configuration files are preserved during upgrade, but
also preserved during a remove and reinstallation process.
\end{itemize}
(see \cite{debian-policy} for details)
-Most of the changes introduces in the Debian packages of \tl\ are due to the
+Most of the changes introduced in the Debian packages of \tl\ are due to the
above two requirements. Other changes are due to the fact that many things
(e.g., fonts, \LaTeX-packages, programs) are already packaged for Debian
and should be reused as far as possible.
@@ -166,7 +167,7 @@
We will not list all the configuration files for te\TeX, and \tl~2005 and
\tl~2007, but instead pick the three most common situations occurring at
-normal usage: adaption of the search pathes and other texmf.cnf settings,
+normal usage: adaption of the search paths and other texmf.cnf settings,
upgrade or installation of a macro package (e.g., \LaTeX\
style file), and installation and activation of a new font (family). We will
only slightly touch the installation of new hyphenation patterns and formats.
@@ -174,25 +175,27 @@
\section{Changing \texttt{texmf.cnf}}
The central configuration file \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.cnf} is special as
-it defines all search pathes for (nearly) all programs in the \TeX\ world.
-All the pathes mentioned above are defined in it, but also other behaviour
+it defines all search paths for (nearly) all programs in the \TeX\ world.
+All the paths mentioned above are defined in it, but also other behaviour
(like various size and security settings) is controlled via this file.
-Since many different packages can contribute to the final \path{texmf.cnf}
-the usual method of shipping parts of the configuration file into a
-special directory \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d} and generation of the final
-file from these snippets has been adopted. If a system administrator wants
+Since many different packages can contribute to the final
+\path{texmf.cnf}, we adopted a method often used in Debian:
+We install parts of the configuration file into a
+special directory \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d} and generate the final
+file from these snippets. If a system administrator wants
to change some setting, he should change the respective file in
\path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d} and call \prog{update-texmf}.
Example: \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d/05TeXMF.cnf} contains the setting for
\path{TEXMFHOME} = \path{$HOME/texmf}. On our system we had
-the input files always in \path{$HOME/texlib}, what I want to
+the input files always in \path{$HOME/texlib}, which I want to
keep. I change the respective line in \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d/05TeXMF.cnf}
-and call as root \prog{update-texmf}.
+and call (as root) \prog{update-texmf}.
-The problem with this approach is that upgrades of the file \path{05TeXMF.cnf}
-are either not taken, or I have to change the settings after every change
+The problem with this approach is that upon upgrade, either I must
+reject changes of the file \path{05TeXMF.cnf},
+or I have to change the settings after every change
of \path{05TeXMF.cnf} in the Debian package. Here a bit of \path{KPSE} magic
helps: As earlier settings in \path{texmf.cnf} override later ones, I can
add a file \path{03local.cnf} to \path{/etc/texmf/texmf.d} and put the
@@ -231,7 +234,7 @@
\subsection{User}
If you don't have the permissions to write to \path{TEXMFLOCAL} just
-replace \path{TEXMFLOCAL} with \path{TEXMFHOME} and you are done.
+replace \path{TEXMFLOCAL} with \path{TEXMFHOME} and do the same.
As a user calling \prog{mktexlsr} is not necessary.
\section{Installation and activation of a font package}
@@ -327,7 +330,7 @@
we provide independent packaging of Con\TeX{}t and lua\TeX\ to make Debian
the ideal play ground for further developments.
-For the stable release Etch of Debian we will provide backports at
+For Debian's stable release ``etch'' we will provide backports at
\url{www.backports.org/foo/bar/baz/bla}.
\SetBibJustification{\raggedright}
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