[tex-live] tlmgr blacklist packages

[Victor Ivrii]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 4:56 PM, George N. White III <gnwiii at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

We are discussing personal computer, not the multiuser system. In math
departments people usually do not find advices on internet but just
copy from their old articles which they copied from the articles of
their supervisors ... which ... :-)

Also people send papers to one another, often collaborate, the most
*advanced* swap preambles (loaded packages, \newcommand, \def ... so
the same \varepsilon is also \veps, \eps ....

But note: if there is no package used in article my esteemed colleague
received by email, sysadmin would hear by a combination of the roar of
T-Rex in the mating season, jet engine with afterburner and battle cry
of cannibal tribe. On the other hand if due to obscure package used
document looks like crap it is not a problem of sysadmin and more
often than not this matches the notion of the beautiful typesetting of
the esteemed professor :-)


Victor




-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii