[tex-live] dates

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Tue Jan 23 01:55:18 CET 2007


On 1/20/07, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:

> It's a pity that everything will be frozen now because texmf.cnf for
> Windows is completely broken at the moment.  I don't know what can be
> done because, though I made several suggestions, I did not get any
> response from Staszek.
>
> getnonfreefonts will definitely not work anymore because TEXMFHOME had
> been removed from TEXMF.  This had been done deliberately in order to
> break getnonfreefonts but I don't know whether other programs are
> affected too.

Windows has always been broken in this regard, and (vendors' claims to
the contrary notwithstanding) many well-known commercial apps suffer
from settings leaks across users.

> Currently TeXLive-2007 is a mixture between a per-user and a
> system-wide installation.  All *-sys programs had been removed but
> there is still a TEXMFLOCAL directory (which is supposed to contain
> files provided by an administrator) but not a TEXMFHOME (which is
> supposed to contain files provided by a user).

Never underestimate the difficulty of doing things sensible on WIn32.
What would unix/linux be like if 98% of all users habitually worked as
root?  If you feel Win32 developers have let you down, just remember
that they have taken on a very difficult problem that may not have a
really satisfactory solution by the standards of people accustomed to
the alternatives.

What about adding a template in texmf.cnf for a non-free fonts tree
that the user can create wherever suits?

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia


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