[tex-live] TL2005 and windvi

[gnwiii at gmail.com]

On 5/8/06, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> >>>>> "gnwiii" == gnwiii  <gnwiii at gmail.com> writes:
>
>   > I have ImageMagick installed separately, so I'm not sure if it was
>   > in TL2005.
>
> ImageMagick depends on a lot of external libraries.  I think that
> integrating it into TL consumes too much time.
>
> I hope that TeXLive-2006 will include sam2p.
>
>   http://www.inf.bme.hu/~pts/sam2p
>
> sam2p can convert plenty of bitmap formats to EPS or PDF.  It is
> incredibly fast and produces extremely small files without loss of
> quality.
>
>   > At some point I also ran into problems with the version of perl in
>   > TL2005,
>
> It would be nice if you could provide some details.  Maybe it can be
> fixed in TL-2006.

The problems were building R-2.3.0rc, which uses a number of perl
scripts in the build process.   I didn't really investigate beyond
disabling TL perl in favor of the current Active State perl.  I
suspect most TeX Live users will install the TL version that is
current when they get a new computer and keep it until they upgrade
the computer or finish the book, whichever comes first.  When perl was
harder to install without conflicts (e.g., win9x), it made sense to
include it in TeX Live.   These days perl is easy to install, so the
potential for conflicts outweighs the small benefits of a bundled
perl.  The same is true of ghostscript and ImageMagick.

I suppose it would help to have a short chapter in the installation
manual that discusses the generic tools used by TL.  Except on Win32,
these are generally assumed to be available from the OS packager.  For
Win32, effort spent on improving the installer has greater benefit
than providing tools that are readily available elsewhere.  The
installer could even make suggestions: "Hmmm, I can't seem to find
perl on your system.  It is recommended that you install perl ver XX
from one of the following sites..."

--
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia