[OS X TeX] R, paradigm to bring into the LaTeX world?

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Oct 23, 2006, at 00:45, Frank STENGEL wrote:

> Why not expand TCOBrowser to include mpm or a way to communicate  
> with it ? Most of the work has already been done.

Indeed, why not?  I've been waiting for someone to add this.  I'd do  
it myself except a) I don't need it and b) I don't have time.  I'd be  
happy to help someone who had more motivation.

> What is left is the actual communication bit. I.e. showing whether  
> a package has been installed and giving the option to upgrade/ 
> install it. One tricky bit would be to initialize the system to  
> know which packages have been installed by i-installer/mactex in  
> what version...

For TCOBrowser, wrapping the mpm command-line tool with NSTask is the  
route I would recommend, since the underlying code is C++; this is  
likely fairly straightforward.  MikTeX is also licensed under the  
GPL, so I don't want to incorporate or link with it (TCOBrowser is  
BSD licensed).  One difficulty is that TCOBrowser is based on the TeX  
Catalogue Online, and MikTeX may not be a subset of it, so some way  
to merge the package listings is required.

Adam
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