[tex-live] tlmgr blacklist packages

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Fri Nov 13 22:56:07 CET 2009


On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Robin Fairbairns
> <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> which the of course breaks peoples old documents
>
> Or documents sent by other people. Sure subfig supersedes subfigure
> but one needs not only to replace \usepackage{subfigure} by
> \usepackage{subfig} but also \subfigure by \subfloat. There could be
> other quirks. I see no harm to keep an old package unused

How do you keep it unused?   If it really is unused, it doesn't matter
if it is installed.

The internet is full of advice that recommends old packages, so
people will try to use old packages in new documents.  If the
package isn't installed, they may either attempt to install it
from CTAN or look for a similar package that is already
installed.

>>
>> if leo only ever processes his own, that's fine.
>>
>> wouldn't do for me, but then my position is probably every bit as
>> atypical as yours.
>
> Our sysadmins are scared of a couple of my esteemed colleagues who if
> their 20y.o. document is not compiles will make everybody's life
> miserable only to discover that it was they who made "minor
> improvement" to it

They should also be scared of the colleague who finds advice to use
an obsolete package on the internet, only to have coauthors complaining
that they don't have the package or worse, the document doesn't
compile properly due to some problem of the obsolete package.

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


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