[tex-live] lua path

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Tue Dec 10 02:31:08 CET 2013


On 2013-12-09 at 20:29:20 +0000, Robin Fairbairns wrote:

 > Philip Taylor <P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk> wrote:
 > 
 > > Since, in the opinion of the TeX Live cadre, most questions
 > > are stupid, if one is to judge by the responses that Norbert
 > > et al are wont to give, then the simplest thing would be
 > > to modify TeXdoc to simply display the text "If you need to
 > > ask, you are too stupid to use TeX", regardless of any
 > > parameter(s) passed.
 > > 
 > > >> Why is anyone asking texdoc about perl? IMNSHO, it's perfectly okay for
 > > >> texdoc to give a stupid answer to a stupid question.
 > > > 
 > > > +1
 > > 
 > > Maxwell, Adam R wrote:
 > > 
 > > > Where does that end, though? How about texdoc {python,tcl,r,ruby,sh}?
 > > > Why is anyone asking texdoc about perl? IMNSHO, it's perfectly okay
 > > > for texdoc to give a stupid answer to a stupid question.
 > > 
 > > -\infty.  There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid
 > > answers, of which yours (IMENSHO) is just about as stupid as an
 > > answer can get.
 > 
 > gasp ... robin agrees with philip (on a matter other than music!)
 > 
 > a text for texdoc perl, explaining tex live's perl (and why an actual
 > user shouldn't want it) surely doesn't need more than a couple of
 > paragraphs.  (if that.)
 > 
 > i appreciate how little most tex experts like to think of the average
 > user (who has no control of his tex system, and doesn't know how to
 > install hir own).  i don't think tex live should go that way.

I prefer not to mention Perl at all.  There is no need to bother
innocent users with the details and experienced users will find it out
anyway.  I fear that documentation can be understood as advertising.
TeX Live doesn't provide Perl for general use.  Period.

Phil successfully called the hidden Perl by specifying an absolute path.
But it doesn't work this way.  All you can achieve this way is to get
a help or usage message, retrieve Perl's version number, or maybe you
can use the -e option in order to print "Hello World!" to screen.

If the hidden Perl is invoked this way it's not able to find any
of its modules.  As I said before, this is on purpose.  TeX Live is
not a Perl distribution.

The biggest problem is that if the *deliberatly* hidden Perl is
mentioned in the documentation, it leads to wrong expectations.

Assume that it simply doesn't exist.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
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Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
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