[tldistro] tlmgr on Mac query

[Rowland McDonnell]

Hello,

I've not subscribed to the tldistro mailing list.  I have come across an
issue with tlmgr, and since the Web page that tlmgr pointed me at was
<http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html>, and that Web page mentions the
tldistro mailing list as relevant, here I am.

I've just installed MacTeX 2008 on my MacOS X 10.4.11 4G5 Macintosh.

I have looked at the TeX Live guide.  It tells me that:

tlmgr -gui

will start tlmgr in GUI mode.

What I get when I try the above command is this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Cannot load Tk, thus the GUI cannot be started!
The Perl/Tk module is not shipped with the TeX Live installation.
You have to install it to get tlmgr GUI running. See
http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html for more details.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Web page in question supplies no information that I can see to help
me deal with this issue.

However, supplied with MacTeX 2008 is the file `TeX Live Manager.pdf'

which /does/ explain things nicely (see big quoted chunk below).  I feel
that it might not be a bad idea to provide a pointer for Mac users in
the text that tlmgr spits out when tlmgr -gui does not work - as it is,
Mac users get sent somewhere that's bafflingly useless.

------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Using the X11 GUI for tlmgr 

In case you haven’t heard of it,X11 is an alternate graphics windowing
system often used in GNU/Linux and other Unix based architectures. It is
roughly the equivalent of the Aqua user interface on the Macintosh. OSX
comes with code which allows X11 programs to run on the Macintosh. These
programs have a different look and feel than typical Macintosh programs,
but the differences are easily mastered. The code is also called X11; it
was an optional install on OSX10.3 and 10.4,but is part of the default
install on 10.5 Leopard. If you didn’t install X11 earlier,you can
obtain it from your OSX Install Disk by clicking on the Optional
Installs package.

The tlmgr GUI program requires Perl/Tk,an optional package for Perl.
While the Macintosh has Perl,it does not have this optional package. We
have provided an install package for Perl/Tk in the TEXLive Manager
subfolder of the/Applications/TeX/Utilitiesdirectory;this package
requires at least OSX 10.4, but installs automatically with no work.
------------------------------------------------------------------

(also: is there any documentation for tlmgr other than the man page
available via tlmgr -help? - something accessible to people who are not
stone-cold Unix + texlive experts, perhaps?  I realise there is faint
hope of an answer in the affirmative, but I've got to try.)

Thank you,
Rowland.