"beamer and TeX on Macs" Re: mactex.tar.gz (complete ... Re: [OS X TeX] final tex live 2007

[Victor Ivrii]

On 3/12/07, Roussanka Loukanova <rloukano at stp.lingfil.uu.se> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007, Victor Ivrii wrote:
> ...
> > If you want to have important for you packages up-to-date you need to
> > compile MPM and use it or do it manually (MPM sometimes does not know
> > packages; so manual job is unavoidable)
>
> I'm sorry for not being behind: what is MPM?

MikTeX Package manager. You can get a source (aka tools) from
miktex.org but you need
to compile it (so to have devtools installed)

>
> > beamer:
> ...
>
> > 2) Decide if you want to install it: in texmf.local (whenever it is -
> > depends on distribution)
> > or ~/Library/texmf
>
> I think that these local places would be good for packages that are not
> in the TeX distribution(s) on our machines (TeXLive-07 or gwTeX); while
> beamer is.

I prefer texmf.local on my macs since it becomes available for all
users. Something for testing I put in ~/Library


>
> Bruno already wrote about the pluses and minuses of using the upper
> directories for local additions vs. ~/Library/texmf. Esp., if one uses
> multiple TeX distributions, the minuses add up against ~/Library/texmf,
> for packages that are in one of the distributions, but not in some others.
> When you switch to the TeX distr that has its own version of that package,
> then you have to take care to put out of ~/Library/texmf that extra
> package.
>

Since you are going to install, you need to decide (unless you want to
invite all mailing list to administrate you mac :-) The result would
be a Royal Mess


> Also, getting a package into either of the local locations, while it is in
> the TeX distribution that one uses (beamer is actually in both TeX
> distrs), comes with more minuses: I myself may miss to remove my local
> copy, when the TeX distr get a newer version...
>
> If the new version of latex-beamer doesn't get into gwTeX, then
> those of us who want it, have to download it somewhere, and it seems that
> ~/Library/texmf/... is the best place in this case. At least it would be
> easier to remove it then. But I myself would wait a little bit: hoping
> that gwTeX will be updated.

Actually Gerben (even in the days when he officially supported) acted
on `per need` basis. So `need` should be expressed.


>
> Roussanka
>
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>


-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii

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