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Dear TeX-Live team:<BR>
<BR>
I recently started using a new workstation with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (86_64) operating system. Somewhat disappointed that only tetex was provided (TeXLive is included in recent Fedora distros), I first tried installing TeXLive from the DVD that was sent to members last year. The installation program failed to run from the DVD for reasons that I did not record. Instead, I installed the beta version of TeXLive 2009. The purpose of this email is to report my experience.<BR>
<BR>
First, just to let you know who I am. I've been a TeX / LaTeX user since the early 80s, and a TUG member for about as long. I've used TeX under mainframes, DOS, OS/2, Windows, and mainly, since the withering away of OS/2, linux. While I'm reasonably competent with linux, I am mainly a scientific programmer, not a systems programmer. I am not a user of rsync and would have appreciated some examples to help me obtain files in this way. Instead of learning more about rsync and/or wget, I simply downloaded all the required files from the mirror in Utah on 8 August; I have not updated the system since then.<BR>
<BR>
The installation went well, and my experience with this installation has been excellent. I was extremely pleased to see many of my favorite extras included in the main distribution! I have not added anything to my local texmf tree! Thank you! <BR>
<BR>
One suggestion, however: I notice that you include RevTeX (American Physical Society). There is a related package, JASA-TeX (Acoustical Society of America), which some users would find of interest. It's available here:<BR>
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.aip.org/asa/jasaTeX-0.1tc7.zip">ftp.aip.org/asa/jasaTeX-0.1tc7.zip</A><BR>
<BR>
It's of course your decision how many journal-specific packages you want to include, and probably depends on the publishers policies. I'll simply point out what I've recently used FYI.<BR>
<BR>
I've used the Springer-Verlag class svjour3.cls for a submission to International Journal of Thermophysics, a Springer Journal. Unfortunately, LaTeX style files are difficult to find on the Springer site; <A HREF="ftp://ftp.spring.de">ftp.spring.de</A> has a general set of files in global.zip, but I don't see the version 3.2 that I've been using there. The Springer files on CTAN are hopelessly out of date.<BR>
<BR>
I recently published in Metrologia, and used the Institute of Physics macros iopart.cls and associated files, available here:<BR>
<A HREF="http://authors.iop.org/atom/help.nsf/0/B042B0AF79C815B88025702000409514?OpenDocument">http://authors.iop.org/atom/help.nsf/0/B042B0AF79C815B88025702000409514?OpenDocument</A><BR>
IOP support for LaTeX has improved greatly since I last published in Metrologia in 2005.<BR>
<BR>
TeXLive has current files for Elsevier, thank you!<BR>
<BR>
*****************************************************<BR>
Now, back to my installation:<BR>
<BR>
At the end of the installation the following was printed to screen:<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff"> Add /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf/doc/man to MANPATH.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff"> Add /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf/doc/info to INFOPATH.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff"> Most importantly, add /usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/x86_64-linux</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff"> to your PATH for current and future sessions.</FONT><BR>
<BR>
This is probably a bad idea! RHEL5 and most recent Fedoras (AFAIK) do not use MANPATH or INFOPATH. Setting, e.g. <BR>
INFOPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf/doc/inf:$INFOPATH<BR>
means ONLY the info files in /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf/doc/inf are<BR>
found. However, this may be a problem with my own lack of expertise.<BR>
<BR>
For completeness, I'll also report that I got this message:<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">###############################################################################</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">fmtutil: Error! Not all formats have been built successfully.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">Visit the log files in directory</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff"> /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-var/web2c</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">for details.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">###############################################################################</FONT><BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">This is a summary of all `failed' messages:</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">`xetex -ini -jobname=cont-en -progname=context -8bit *cont-en.ini' failed</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">`xetex -ini -jobname=xetex -progname=xetex -etex xetex.ini' failed</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000ff">`xetex -ini -jobname=xelatex -progname=xelatex -etex xelatex.ini' failed</FONT><BR>
<BR>
I'm not a xetex user so I haven't followed up on this.<BR>
<BR>
Thank you very much your your work on TeXLive; I hope my feedback is of some use.<BR>
<BR>
Best wishes,<BR>
<BR>
Jim Mehl<BR>
<BR>
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