[OS X TeX] Feedback

[Gerben Wierda]

On Jun 4, 2004, at 03:59, Anthony Morton wrote:

> Personally I like to think of i-Installer as 'Fink without the 
> baggage', but I don't know that Gerben would want to go that far.  :-)

No. Fink is a good idea mainly, I just happen to have started from a 
different perspective, namely that it must be usable without people 
having a developer system installed, good for more than compiling from 
sources (fink can do that these days I think). I also have a different 
opinion about a few philosophical points. Fink wants to make sure 
everything works. It does that by separating an area on your system to 
build its own subsystem and that things work together is possible by 
keeping relations within that subsystem. That approach has one 
potential security drawback, namely that you have to give the 
possibility to override Apple stuff. But it is basically a good idea. 
My project never was providing the installer and the packages, I 
provide only a limited set in i-Installer. I wanted the installer to be 
a citizien that can live in many worlds. You could use the i-package to 
configure a TeX installation that you built from the sources and I 
wouldn't care less. I lose the possibility of control that fink has, I 
gain the possibilty of integrating i-Installer with other modes of 
software install and I do not take it upon me to maintain my own 
subsystem. Having subsystems in my mind is not the most elegant 
situation, but it is the only situation if you want to provide users 
with the stability only a controlled subsystem can give you. It is give 
and take, both projects are in a different niche.

G

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