[OS X TeX] TeX is not for the faint of heart

[Maarten Sneep]

On 6 mei 2004, at 12:43, Will Robertson wrote:

> Gary L. Gray wrote:
>
>> We simply need to make that page the best it can be. The benefit of 
>> using our (Joe Slater and me) page is that we don't have to pay for a 
>> domain name and we don't have to pay for hosting.
>> I should also mention that we are willing to host anything Mac OS X 
>> TeX related on that machine. We have tons of disk space and bandwidth 
>> (heck, PSU is an Internet 2 site).
>
> Are you saying there's no point in buying mactex.org, or that if it 
> was bought, your current machine is a good one to host it from?

To be honest, I think that all things TeX -- regardless of platform -- 
should start from tug.org, maybe with links to platform specific links 
from there. There is an important distinction, which the OP missed I 
think: TeX and LaTeX have many layers, but three items stand out: 
"Installing TeX & co", "Using the programs" and "Using TeX".

The first item is a non-event on the Mac, thanks to Gerben, and Andrew 
Trevorrow and Tom Kiffe before him.

The second item is also fairly easy, thanks to Richard and Jerôme,

The third item is deceitfully hard -- slightly depending on the task at 
hand. Luckily, the third item is also very platform _independent_, so 
we can tap into the work done at TUG.org, the not so short 
introduction..., the latex primer, the UK tex faq, etc.

While we should provide pointers to new users where to get information, 
I think it is important to limit the mactex website to the first two 
items, and leave the third item to TUG.

Maarten
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