[tex-live] TL and win32

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "Staszek" == Staszek Wawrykiewicz <staw at gust.org.pl> writes:

  > On Tue, 19 Dec 2006, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
  >> Well, adding variables is not a problem.  What I do not recommend
  >> is to remove the -sys stuff.  If you cannot distinguish between
  >> getnonfreefonts and getnonfreefonts-sys I fear that users and
  >> system administrators install files in the same directory which
  >> will lead to severe problems with file permissions (as happened
  >> in TL2005).

  > I do not see any related issues concerning file
  > permission. Simply: we do not have -sys variant executables (like
  > fmtutil, updmap) for win32, so having env variables in texmf.cnf
  > caused only a mess for win users (e.g. while running any program
  > which updates ls-R).

A friend tested getnonfreefonts as a normal user though he had installed
TeXLive as root.  He got an error message "Permission denied" of course.

I don't know how this problem can be solved without the -sys files.

  >> Regarding different texmf.cnf files for UNIX/Windows: It doesn't
  >> hurt if they are different, but I'm not completely convinced that
  >> this is a good idea unless there is a good reason.  If you
  >> provide a different version vntex users will be grateful if you
  >> set the variable OSFONTDIR there so that the system fonts are
  >> found.  On the other hand I do not see any problem setting it in
  >> the generic texmf.cnf too.  The best solution however is if the
  >> installer sets the environment variable
  >> 
  >> OSFONTDIR=%SystemRoot%\Fonts//

  > OK, why not adding it to WIN32?

If you insist on a separate texmf file for Windows it doesn't matter.

  > As I wrote you before, I consider all those .bat files from the
  > Ghostscript distribution very rarely needed for TeX
  > applications...  We have enough scripts using GS, so I would leave
  > the whole mess to the (advanced) users. All in all, the installer
  > have to add gswin32c.exe location to PATH, and add GS_LIB env
  > variable.

It's a pity that ghostscript is under GPL so that it is not required
to provide the complete package.  Please excuse me for being so
impolite, but I find it quite annoying if people decide which software
other people have to use.  Are you sure that everything works if you
arbitrarily remove scripts?  Some scripts/programs depend on other
scripts/programs.  Do you have a complete overview?

I don't understand why you try to break everything deliberately.

  >> It is much better to have a zip file which is supposed to be
  >> extracted in tlroot.  I'll create such a zip file tomorrow.  You
  >> can look into it and decide whether you want to use it or not.

I created such a zip file:

  http://ms25.ath.cx/gs8.54-win32-tl.zip

The directory structure is:

   bin/win32
   gs/Resource/CMap
   gs/Resource/ColorSpace
   gs/Resource/Decoding
   gs/doc
   gs/examples
   gs/lib
   gs/lib/fonts
   gs/man/de/man1
   gs/man/man1

The bin/win32 directory contains all the binaries, the dll, and all
batch files.

The fonts are inside the lib directory.  It is sufficient to point the
GS_LIB variable to the lib directory and you don't have to care about
a font directory.

What I have done is:

   * Put the fonts into gs/lib/fonts.
   * Create a file gs/lib/Fontmap.TeXLive.
   * Change gs/lib/Fontmap so that Fontmap.TeXLive is used instead of
     Fontmap.GS. 

gs/lib/fonts contains the fonts:

   * The famous 35 URW fonts (from CTAN, maintained by Walter Schmidt),
   * Bitstream Charter,
   * Adobe Utopia.

These are the fonts mentioned in the original GS Fontmap but some of
them are not provided by GS.

If you want to test it, make sure that the directory bin/win32 is in
PATH and set the environment variable GS_LIB appropriately.
Then strart gswin32c.exe and type

     /Helvetica findfont quit

Either it crashes (hopefully not) or it tells you where it finds
Helvetica. 

It works for me on Linux and I suppose that it works on Windows too,
both executables are compiled from the same sources.  It would be nice
if someone tests it.

  > OK, it would be better to unzip it e.g. in just c:\gs

Why?  Is there any good reason to remove ghostscript from TeXLive?  
What do you want to achieve?
 
Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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