[fptex] TeXlive installation adventures and request

[Frans Goddijn]

I recently installed TeXLive on my W2000 machine. After the turbulencies on
the W98 machine and the experience gathered from that effort, I was more
confident this time.

What was surprising this time is that although I checked the "TeXLive"
option this time, intending to install all possible sub-options, not all of
these were installed. Things like Perl and the W32 utils were not installed
even though these were branches from that TeXlive tree. I understand now
that these must be separately selected, but the user interface, allowing me
to checkmark the top choice, made me expect that this would work that way.

Then I noticed that no matter how often I installed Perl, and rebooted
afterwards, Perl wasn't effectively installed. If I did "perl -v" or
"texexec" on the command line, nothing happened.

When I installed ActiveState Perl from the web this worked without need for
reboot.

Is it possible in the future to install ActiveState Perl instead of the one
in use now on the CD?

I'm away from that W2000 machine now but later this week I'll continue the
installation. I am again confident that this further personal tweaking will
be a breeze, as I'm getting more familiar with the different texmf trees.

One more question, which is more of a request. I think Winedt is a wonderful
"top hat" on top of LeXLive. Without it, a beginner can't easily see the
power of the system that this user has just installed. The main menu shows
only a link to the home page, a latex manual, local guide and TeXLive
uninstall. WinEdt would, for Windows users, promptly add a fully functional
pilot's view of most all that is now possible.

The two together make one heck of a turnkey system, amazingly versatile for
beginners, but it takes an advanced user to put both halves together.

So if the TeXLive team would consider this, I'm sure many (Windows) users
would appreciate it :-)

Best regards,

Frans