[OS X TeX] LaTeX Updater i-Package updated

[Martin Stokhof]

On 1 May, 2006, at 17:22, Josep M. Font wrote:

> El 01/05/2006, a les 16:11, Martin Stokhof va escriure:
>
>> isn't the point of putting a newer, but experimental (so perhaps not 
>> completely reliable and/or compatible) version in texmf.local this 
>> that TeX will use whatever is in texmf.local first (actually after 
>> whatever you have put in ~/Library/texmf, but forget about that), so 
>> you will actually be running the new version, while the older version 
>> is maintained in texmf (but not used)? That way if something turns 
>> out to be wrong with the new version you can gracefully degrade  to 
>> the old version, simply by removing whatever is in texmf.local.
>
> Oh, yes, of course. And this is indeed an important and useful feature 
> of Gerben's setup... but how many of its "normal" users do know this ? 
> That's why I didn't suggest to change this behaviour, I just suggested 
> to explain it better... What seems to me that should be avoided is 
> that one i-package appears to be a "subset" of another one (as a LaTeX 
> installation is a "subset" of a TeX installation), while in the inner 
> workings it is slightly more complicated. If a user sees "LaTeX 
> updater", she should understand clearly what it will do... And when 
> updating the TeX installation a reminder of first uninstalling the 
> LaTeX updater should also appear. Insiders are of course aware that 
> any additions they have made to texmf.local will remain, but what 
> about non-insiders ?
>
> JMaF

Ok, I see what you mean (and I must have misread your original post at 
this point). I guess you're right that this is confusing to a novice 
user, as a longtime user of i-Installer I am not quite able to judge. 
Of course, the underlying structure of a TeX installation is 
complicated and I would think that making it completely transparent for 
a novice user must a tremendous task, so I'm glad that we have this 
wonderful tool, and this wonderful list where I have received great 
advice when struggling with some of the underlying concepts.

Martin

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