[tex-live] TL2004: Technical problems and testing

Hans Hagen pragma at wxs.nl
Fri May 7 09:54:42 CEST 2004


At 03:07 07/05/2004, Karl Berry wrote:

>        We also discussed more robust ways of communicating (proposed)
>        changes. No conclusions were drawn yet.
>
>What is wrong with email to tex-live at tug.org?  Everyone relevant is on
>that list.  It is discussions/decisions *off* the list which cause
>problems, in my experience.

an example: it was only after tex live was produced that i find out that 
generating a czech format fails because the hyhenation file was changes as 
well as moved; a few years before that, the dutch hyphenation file has been 
renamed which made dutch context users end up without hyphenation; 
actually, the changes in tds is another one; it was there for a year and 
only found out recently. Yet another example is the move from 8 to 7 bit 
last year (volker and i were present at the gutenberg meeting and it was 
because daniel asked us why his things failed to work that we realized the 
problem; just good luck). So, what we need is some kind of mechanism where 
'important changes that can break your system' are announced, in such a way 
that they are not burried in discussions.

>Of course I know that many people on tex-live don't care about all the
>ins and outs.  If you think a smaller list would serve us better, that's
>fine.  Although much can be accomplished at physical meetings,
>ultimately email is the only thing that can bring us together; physical
>meetings, wherever in the world they are located, will necessarily
>exclude many key people.  (And I do *not* mean me.)

we can discuss this in SF, a list, or a bulletin board, or ... the trick is 
in keeping it clean and readable

>    - Testers will be required to fill in an application form.
>
>Sorry to say so, but I think this is simply unrealistic.  Even with no
>overhead of an application form, I have received only about five
>responses to my repeated requests on ctt, texhax, and tug mailings for
>testers.  (I had planned to email those people when there was something
>to test.)  In other words, right now we are not in a position to pick
>and choose.

i think that what we had in mind is more active than just asking; it's like 
with meetings and conferences and magazines: asking people that you know 
can do a talk or article often works better nowadays than posting a mail 
asking for that; the form then mainly serves the purpose of getting the 
info needed, esp because cd's need to be sent out

>    - Iso-images and archives of binaries and pool files for the
>       various plattforms are produced regularly and made available,
>
>By Sebastian, as has been done in the past?  Or are you proposing that
>someone else is going to be responsible?  And if so, who?

the machinery is probably already in place then; part of the discussion 
concerned a proper location since there were bandwith problems seen on the 
horizon (harrald would look into that)

i myself would like to have the option to download binaries only (linux, 
windows, mac), since these chance more than the rest

>   - live-CD (runnable from CD), 700mb
>
>We have discussed this at length too, and I was under the impression

Correct me if i'm wrong, but is the liv eversion only for windows users? 
Volker should comment on this, because i think that it's lehmans who expect 
this one?

Hans  



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