[tex-live] tl09 release status: coming up

[C.M. Connelly]

"RF" == Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk>

    RF> every step that tex live takes to make installation
    RF> difficult for users in managed environments, makes life
    RF> even more difficult for users who want to install on their
    RF> home machines.

That's true, although if we get distributions to do a good job of
packaging, and also get them to keep the packages up-to-date, then
the difficulty pretty much goes away.  On, say, a recent Fedora,
Debian, or Ubuntu install, it should be pretty trivial to install
TeX Live; similarly, installing on a Mac with MacTeX or on a PC
with something equivalent to the ProTeX bundle is quite easy.


    RF> i feel claire's targets aren't high enough.  sure, we
    RF> would like tex to be part of every system install, but we
    RF> all know that's not going to happen.  spreading of the tex
    RF> word (which is a serious part of tug's mandate) isn't
    RF> going to happen if it's up to a bofl to decide that his
    RF> users may be permitted to investigate tex live.

I'm all for TeX everywhere, but I suspect that the kind of
sysadmin who would scoff at installing TeX is exactly the kind of
person who would point at individual user installs taking up huge
swaths of disk space as evidence for their disapproval.

In fact, my feeling is that users should hold their system
administrator up to some pretty high standards of service -- if an
application is of use to them, and it seems like it might be
useful to others, then it's probably worth taking the time to get
it set up properly so that everyone has the same installation,
same configuration, and so on.  Individual needs and quirks can be
met with personal configuration files (or texmf trees), but having
a system that is known to be properly installed and working goes a
long way towards making support easier.

   Claire

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  Claire Connelly                              cmc at math.hmc.edu
  Systems Administrator                          (909) 621-8754
  Department of Mathematics                 Harvey Mudd College
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