[OS X TeX] Staying up to date with programs Gerben used to maintain

[Jens Noeckel]

On Dec 13, 2007, at 11:04 AM, Jasper Knockaert wrote:

> Jens Noeckel schreef op 13-12-2007 19:40:
>> On Dec 13, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 13.12.2007 um 19:02 schrieb Berend Hasselman:
>>>
>>>> What does Fink do? Something similar?
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes. It tells to edit ~/.profile or ~/.cshrc that these files  
>>> "include" fink files /sw/bin/init.sh or /sw/bin/init.csh. These  
>>> prepend /sw/bin and /sw/sbin before the original PATH.
>>>
>>> No-one has to do so. (When installing a package with Fink, Fink  
>>> uses unchageable Fink defaults.)
>>>
>> Specifically regarding ghostscript, you can get the latest version  
>> from fink without getting the old tetex, so there should be no  
>> conflict with GWTeX even if the /sw/ path is searched first.
>
> Again: that's Fink. We were discussing MacPorts, where you cannot  
> install e.g. latex2rtf without getting the whole tetex distro with it.
>
>> Of course this assumes that you don't have applications that hard- 
>> code the path to ghostscript's binaries. What you'd get from fink  
>> would be, among many others, the up-to date versions of
>> /sw/bin/dvipdf
>> /sw/bin/eps2eps
>> /sw/bin/pdf2dsc
>> /sw/bin/pdf2ps
>> /sw/bin/ps2ascii
>> /sw/bin/ps2epsi
>> /sw/bin/ps2pdf
>> /sw/bin/ps2pdf12
>> /sw/bin/ps2pdf13
>> /sw/bin/ps2pdf14
>> /sw/bin/ps2pdfwr
>> /sw/bin/ps2ps
>> /sw/bin/ps2ps2
>
> There is no up-to-date version of Ghostscript available through  
> Fink. The most recent version is 8.61, which is available through  
> MacPorts. Fink delivers 8.51 in a default setup. If you manage to  
> understand how to switch to the unstable branch, you may get a hold  
> of 8.60.
>
>

Thanks for pointing that out - you definitely need to enable the  
unstable branch to get new packages from fink (BTW, unstable here  
doesn't mean anything bad, it's just their conservative, careful  
terminology). And regarding version 8.61, I happen to know that the  
maintainer submitted that new package a couple weeks ago - he was  
just too lazy to push for a speedier release into the wild. But the  
up-side of fink (or macports) is that you will eventually get the  
update, and will continue to get updates in the future without having  
to think about it.

Jens