[tex-live] scheme modern

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 6 January 2011 Arno Trautmann wrote:

 > T T wrote:
 > > On 6 January 2011 09:55, Arno Trautmann <Arno.Trautmann at gmx.de> wrote:
 > >> I was wondering if it might be considered for the next TeXlive (2011 I
 > >> hope) to provide an installation scheme "modern". This could be a scheme
 > >> providing everything needed to work with, say, XeLaTeX, luaLaTeX,
 > >> ConTeXt Mk IV etc. but drops a (quite large) number of old, deprecated
 > >> packages (e.g. inputenc/fontenc for LaTeX). That would allow to use the
 > >> most recent developments without installing the full schem and blocking
 > >> disk space by packages that will never be used again.
 > >> (I'm /not/ suggesting to drop those packages at all from TeXlive!)
 > >>
 > >> I sure don't expect an implementation in the next days but rather some
 > >> comments on this.
 > > 
 > > I quite like the idea.  I'm not sure if I would drop inputenc/fontenc.
 > 
 > And there begin the problems É
 > Either one removes radically all packages that are not needed with
 > Xe/lua, or it will indeed result in an only slightly smaller full
 > installation.
 > Regarding Zdeneks comment: Even if not much disk space will be saved,
 > there could be saved a larger /number/ of packages.

I'm not at all convinced that such a scheme is very helpful.  Whenever
you select anything other than scheme-full, I strongly recommend to go
to the collections and languages menus as well, at least to check
whether the scheme contains everything you need.  In many cases some
customization is necessary.  So I'm wondering how much time such a
scheme actually saves.

Regarding maintenance:  It's probably easy to maintain a scheme which
consists of collections only.  There is actually no need to maintain
anything because each package is part of a collection.  But if you add
packages to schemes, especially XeTeX and LuaTeX related packages,
maintenance becomes a nightmare.  Every new package has to be added
manually.  Hence, someone is needed who keeps it up-to-date.

If a scheme only contains essential packages, each user *has to*
customize his installation.  I don't think that so many people are
interested in a scheme which needs manual tweaking.

 > > I would see such a scheme as an amalgam of recommended and most used
 > > packages.  Technically making such a scheme is a piece of cake for us,
 > > the difficult part is to come up with a list of packages/collections
 > > from texlive.tlpdb that should go into it.  Anyone cares to make such
 > > a list (hint: start with one of the existing schemes and add/remove
 > > from it)?
 > 
 > I'd love to do it, but won't have the time to for the next months. But
 > I'd like to review and comment on it :)

As I said before, if you are considering package level, it's not
enough to do something once.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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