[OS X TeX] The MiKTeX Package Manager

[Morten Høgholm]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:37:03 +0200, Jung-Tsung Shen <jushen at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> The following message was digged out from the archive (before I
> subscribed this mailing list). I was a bit surprised that no one
> echoed the post.

Me too actually.

> Among many other features, the Package Manager on
> MikTeX on Windows is one of the most desired features I would like to
> see on Mac.
>
> For those who don't use Windows, what the Package Manager of MikTeX
> does is that it automatically downloads packages from the internet,
> then extracts, and installs packages in your computer. Package Manager
> is triggered by either an explicit call using
> \usepackage[package_name], but the package with package_name is not
> installed; or, better yet, you don't even have to know the name of the
> package (so you didn't call it using \usepackage), if there is a
> command in your document that needs this package, then Package Manager
> is there fore you.

On MiKTeX, issuing some \input command for a file that is nowhere to be  
found will trigger a look-up in the package database to see if it is  
installable. It is unlikely that this feature will work on the web2c  
kernel although it could probably be added.

The package manager can only be used on the command line on *nixes but the  
main advantage is something else:
   1) Packages get installed in a proper tree, you don't need to use your  
private ~/Library/Texmf.

   2) You can update already installed packages easily.

My hope was that programs such as TCOBrowser could make good use of it as  
that would greatly improve such an application (which isn't half bad as it  
is already).
-- 
Morten
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