[tex-live] TL: acrotex/acroweb

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
> Hi Clea,
>
>    acrotex:
>    acroweb;
>
> Ah.  Well, here's another case:
> - these packages depend entirely on acrobat (non-libre) and are not
>  usable with any other pdf reader, to the best of my knowledge.

To me, this is a poor justification.   As long as the package relies on
capabilities that are documented in the PDF manual, those could be
implemented in other readers if the demand were there.

> - they are exceedingly complex and difficult to install (in our process).

as is anything to do with Win32.  To me it is a question of allocating
scarce resources.   More work is needed on the basic Win32
support (tlmgr,, texhelp, dvi viewer, etc.), ConTeXt, testing (the LFS
bug in pdftex), etc.  If someone feels strongly that more resources
should be devoted to a particular aspect of TL, they can do the work
themselves, or find ways to support someone who can.

I suppose part of the issue here is the perl scripts to go from
CTAN to a TL package aren't really up to the task.  If a package
is important, someone could, in principle, put it together manually.
This might be facilitated if the existing perl scripts could generate
a template for the actual package.

> So despite all of Dr. Story's incredible work, they won't be getting
> added to TL, at least not by me.

This does raise a question: what would it take to support 3rd party
packages in tlmgr.  Suppose someone packages acrotex and
puts the package on a server dedicated to things acrobatic.
I can envision a package that actually just installs the installer
for acrotex, so some simple additional steps are needed by the user
to complete the installation.


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