Hello Siep,<br>I appreciate your reply and the comments Reinhard Kotucha<br>has made following. <br><br><b><i>Siep Kroonenberg <siepo@cybercomm.nl></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><siepo@cybercomm.nl><br>> This script requires a reboot. On some lab Macs I have used,<br>> a reboot reset all user settings. I don't know if this is a likely<br>> scenario in a Windows lab, and it does not apply to our NT lab<br>> so this is an approach I can use for some things.<br><br>The lines above merely create a temporary environment for generating<br>formats and mapfiles. The real configuration takes place earlier, by<br>writing to the registry. I tested things under Windows XP and<br>Windows 2000, and in those tests a re-login was sufficient.<br><br></siepo@cybercomm.nl></blockquote><siepo@cybercomm.nl></siepo@cybercomm.nl>This is a problem for our location. Lab
users cannot<br>write to the registry. Parts of the ghostscript installation<br>and dviout installation done by tlpmgui issued warnings<br>when they got to apparently non-critical stages that I think<br>involved writing to the registry. I have not been to the<br>lab to test yet though.<br><br><siepo@cybercomm.nl></siepo@cybercomm.nl><blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><siepo@cybercomm.nl><br>I am working on a web page about portable TeX Live and MikTeX, with<br>revised scripts and howtos. It might be useful to include a<br>zero-config solution where you start up a command prompt or an<br>editor with the right environment settings, somewhat in the spirit<br>of your Emacs solution. I would have to test how much functionality<br>could be made available this way.<br></siepo@cybercomm.nl></blockquote><siepo@cybercomm.nl></siepo@cybercomm.nl>I look forward to your site and am glad to help in testing if
you<br>need, and of course to provide my emacs approach if you find it is<br>useful. <br><blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><siepo@cybercomm.nl><br>I had something in mind that I can give to people for use at<br>arbitrary locations, so that is why I prefer to put in some tests.<br>Adding Ghostscript and an editor is the right idea. But for an<br>editor I would pick something like TeXnicCenter, which has a wider<br>appeal. <br></siepo@cybercomm.nl></blockquote><siepo@cybercomm.nl></siepo@cybercomm.nl> I have committed to giving at least one poster presentation on my <br>project, of which this is a part, at statistical conferences this summer <br>based on what I already have working in our lab. Because of emacs' <br>inter-operation with major statistical packages, I anticipate the emacs <br>specific approach will be of interest to my audience. However, having <br>a non-emacs approach may be of
interest to some, in which case <br>having your work to reference will be valuable for me.<br><br>You mentioned to Reinhard Kotucha in another part of this thread using<br>tlpmgui. My own thought with regard to tlpmgui was to see if it could<br>have an option for configuring a master for a zero config DVD. That<br>is, to automate what I have done, starting with the contents of the DVD<br>image on writable media, installing into the TeX Live root hierarchy all <br>necessary auxiliary software (perhaps including the emacs source already <br>on the DVD? This gets complicated on Windows and last time I tried from <br>source on OS X), performing necessary configuration, such<br>as setting paper defaults appropriately and inserting the emacs<br>startup file, and possibly the ini file to launch the editor on<br>DVD insertion as you suggest.<br><br>Given that I already have non-TeX related motivation for overcoming<br>barriers to working in emacs, the emacs context may provide
some<br>advantages. Regarding conflicting installations, I think for some<br>things, exec-path may determine what binaries are used. If that is not<br>enough to circumvent problems, I think I may be able to prepend to<br>%PATH%. Furthermore, it looks like I will be able to do tests on <br>environment variables provided to emacs that will allow me to<br>make this zero-config approach work on OSX and Linux as well. <br><br>I have worked through the emacs lisp documentation to the point that I <br>believe I have all the pieces I need to make things work and will get to <br>the lab starting this evening to start putting a generalized version of the <br>DVD together. The emacs binaries are a constraint, making a lab specific <br>DVD easier than an arbitrary location DVD. The relatively large size of a <br>DVD opens these interesting possibilities, but there is a limit. In my own<br>project, I am right up against the maximum size. I need to look into weather<br>the ISO
file system imposes even tighter constraints that I do not yet <br>understand. I am still learning about re-distribution licenses, but perhaps <br>distributing a pair of DVDs in a jewel case could make more space by putting <br>source files on the second DVD.<br><siepo@cybercomm.nl></siepo@cybercomm.nl><blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><siepo@cybercomm.nl><br>And personally I wouldn't worry too much about dvi viewing<br>if Ghostscript is available for converting to pdf.<br>-- <br>Siep Kroonenberg<br></siepo@cybercomm.nl></blockquote>I will look into your suggestion about Ghostscript as an alternative<br>to a dvi viewer. I thought about finding out how to change the AUCTeX<br>default from latex and dvi to pdflatex and a pdf viewer. But then I<br>had difficulty using Acrobat as the viewer, and set that aside.<br><br>-Poti Giannakouros<br><p> 
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