[tex-live] tl09 release status: coming up

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Wed Oct 14 10:50:11 CEST 2009


Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Robin Fairbairns
> <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> > we would like tex to
> > be part of every system install,
> 
> I am not sure that it is such a good idea. Our Department orders RHL
> because University administration believes it provides the best
> stability and support. But it is very conservative and comes with
> rather well established (aka obsolete) staff, in particular with
> tetex-3.0 (at least it was the case a couple of years ago)

redhat has changed.  rhel (aka centos, i think) does indeed still
install tetex, but i suspect it's due for an update, at which time it
will be difficult for them to avoid tl (though presumably tl07).

> and there
> is very little incentive to update it (actually, on the contrary,
> there are always a couple of my esteemed colleagues who have ancient
> files which due to some miracle work with tetex-3 distribution but may
> break with the newer packages and then the hell breaks loose; so
> overloaded system administrators are rather scared to update TeX
> especially to TeXLive because of accusations: "You changed the system
> and my files stopped working" while in fact usually it is the case
> with these users "slightly" changing something).

i guess things are different here; though since we started installing
tl07 as standard, we've only had a couple of such bleats.

tetex 3, in fact, isn't _all_ that bad (indeed, i deliberately run it at
home, to check the compatibility of the faq releases).

> So, preinstalled TeX is a double-edged sword: it forces TeX in the
> cases when it would not be installed otherwise but it forces obsolete
> TeX in the cases when a newer version would be installed anyway

i'm well aware of that, but there's little we (tex live) can do about
it.  i guess it might be a good idea for packages to issue warnings
saying "you're running an obsolete tex distribution, this package may
not work", so that people (herds of them) who "find a package on the
internet" get warned of the problems they might encounter.

i suspect you're on the same side as me, though, saying tex live
_shouldn't_ be avoiding "simplifying" action, for fear that people will
get in over their heads.

robin


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