[OS X TeX] Finally we are grown up

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Nov 16, 2006, at 17:46, Alan Munn wrote:

> At 6:50 PM -0500 11/16/06, Alan Munn wrote:
>> One thing that has been bothering me in this whole discussion is  
>> whether or not there are extras provided by Gerben via i-Installer  
>> that are NOT part of the TeXLive distribution.  Specifically I'm  
>> thinking of things like Ghostscript, Imagemagick, FontForge etc.  I  
>> assume that these are also going to disappear, yet (like  
>> Ghostscript) are important for a working TeX installation.  If this  
>> is true, then TeXLive is not the panacea that it is being made out  
>> to be in this discussion.
>>
>> Or am I missing something?  When I first started to use TeX I did  
>> so using Fink because seemed to be the simplest way to install both  
>> TeX and its related utilities.  I've now weaned myself off of Fink  
>> and am happy with i-installer and the MikTeX package manager, but I  
>> don't relish the thought of having to chase around for every extra  
>> component and install it by hand.
>
> At 1:07 AM +0100 11/17/06, Claus Gerhardt wrote:
>> The packages you mentioned can be installed independently, and I  
>> think MacTex will either install them by default or offer their  
>> installation as an option.
>>
>
> I understand that they can be installed separately, but that was  
> exactly my point.  I would prefer not to have to scrounge around for  
> those extra components, and i-Installer made that simple.  MacTeX,  
> as I understand it, depends on Gerben's distribution and also  
> install some other things like TeXShop and BibDesk with very little  
> choice on the part of the user.   Am I misinformed about how MacTeX  
> works?

You're correct.  People will have to rely on an alternate source for  
up-to-date ghostscript/ImageMagick/etc, which means using a system  
like fink or compiling your own from source and dealing with  
dependency nightmares.  Alternately, someone could take over Gerben's  
i-Package maintainership and roll those updates into MacTeX.

Adam

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