[tex-live] texdoc can't find texmf.cnf

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Mon Jun 23 19:43:25 CEST 2008


On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:

> Personally, it makes little difference to me which format is used. But I
> think it's clear that PDF is the de facto standard for fully-formatted
> documentation, and I think TeX is best served by integrating with the wider
> computing world as much as possible rather than (by default) living in its
> own parallel universe.
>
> Expert users are of course free to use other formats and other tools that
> may serve them better, but let's not impose our specialist approaches on
> B.~L.~User in cases where he has already-familiar tools that can serve the
> purpose.

I concur.  It is important that people new to tex and that haven't managed to
get things working have access to the documentation.  Also, the TeX
community has to maintain/support xdvi, while other people are looking
after pdf viewers.  Time is better spent encouraging those other people
to avoid breaking things related to TeX.  I can get by without .dvi, but
don't take away my pdf viewer.  Finally, some people use TeX (lit. prog.)
for software.  Compute servers may provide TeX, but often don't have X
headers, so you are limited to X apps the vendor provides.

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


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