[OS X TeX] Re: suggestion
Herbert Schulz
herbs at wideopenwest.com
Wed Nov 11 02:24:06 CET 2009
On Nov 10, 2009, at 6:46 PM, <epicurus at forallx.net> wrote:
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 16:32:39 -0500
>> From: epicurus at forallx.net
>> Subject: [OS X TeX] suggestion
>>
>> There've been some complaints about the lag of TL2009 showing up on
>> servers. I certainly don't mind waiting. But I will say it was
>> supremely irritating that the following three things were
>> simultaneously true:
>>
>> (1) The MacTeX page tug.org/mactex had a link that said it was TL2009
>> (complete with a date and size), and gave no indication that TL2008
>> might get downloaded instead. The "note" seems only to reflect that
>> either TL2009 would be downloaded or, if a mirror wasn't up to date,
>> nothing at all would be downloaded.
>>
>> (2) The result of clicking on that link was the download of a file
>> that was in fact TL2008.
>>
>> (3) The filename, both once downloaded and as appeared at the end of
>> the URL in Safari's status bar, gave zero indication that it was for
>> TL2008. In fact, it gives no indication of year at all.
>>
>> These three together are seriously misleading. I had no way of
>> knowing that TL2008 was coming until it was already downloaded and
>> unzipped. Had either (1) or (3) been absent, I wouldn't have wasted
>> all that time downloading. When using Safari for downloading, we
>> don't see what symbolic links are pointing to what.
>>
>> Please, in the future, either make (1) or (3) go away. That will
>> solve this problem.
>
> On rereading my message, I see that I phrased it poorly so that some
> might take offense (indeed some did). When I said it was irritating
> that "these three things are simultaneously true", I wasn't providing
> a list of things that are each individually irritating. Rather, any
> two of those three, without the third, wouldn't be irritating to me at
> all. The three of them, however, were jointly irritating.
>
> My complaint was that, having clicked on a link that says "TL2009", I
> got a file that was TL2008 *and* had no way to know this was TL2008
> until the download and unzipping were complete---because the filename
> doesn't have the year in it. I made a suggestion that for 2010,
> either: the filename *that one sees in Safari* (in the downloads
> window and the status bar) be changed to reflect the year, OR: that
> the mactex page clearly state that in clicking on the TL2010 link one
> might get the previous year's distro instead.
>
> So to be clear: the complaint is really about signposting. I wasn't
> complaining that there is a lag. I wasn't "suggesting" that the lag
> be made to go away. I'm perfectly fine with waiting for propagation.
> I wasn't asking for a link to a specific mirror that has the real
> TL2009. This is why my suggestion was to make either the first or
> third thing vanish; I assumed that there's nothing that can be done
> about the second thing. The other two are issues with labeling.
>
> - epicurus
Howdy,
I understood what your problem was and sympathise. With some luck you'll be able to keep the whole package up to date via tlmgr/TeX Live Utility from now on---including not having to do a full update for TeX Live 2010. From 2008->2009 there were some structural changes in TeX Live that didn't allow for that nice transition. Sorry, no guarantees! :-)
Maybe news travels too fast on this list? :-)
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)
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