[tex-live] scheme modern

[Khaled Hosny]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 08:34:15PM +0000, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 08:06:34PM +0100, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> > > On 6 January 2011 Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> > > 
> > >  > TikZ is very complex package. Beginners will hardly be able to use
> > >  > it.  Users who are able to use TikZ will probably need a lot of
> > >  > other packages.
> > > 
> > > TikZ is used by pgfplots.  And I know beginners who use it *because*
> > > it's easy to use.  If you don't point them to pgfplots, they use Excel
> > > instead and then ask you how to get this stuff into their LaTeX files.
> > > Good luck!
> > >  
> > >  > I have scheme-full installed. The size of the whole texmf-dist is
> > >  > 2.4 GB while the size of texmf-dist/tex containing the packages is
> > >  > only 172 MB, ie about 7% of total size. If you do not remove the
> > >  > largest packages as TikZ and fonts, you hardly save any space. If
> > >  > you do not want to remove TeX Gyre, you can probably remove support
> > >  > for Arabic and Asian languages, it may save some good space.
> > > 
> > > But many people use XeTeX/LuaTeX in order to typeset Arabic and Asian
> > > scripts. :)
> > 
> > There is no usable (for modern engines) Arabic fonts in texlive AFAIK,
> > so Arabic users are not losing that much (Also Arabic fonts tend to be
> > small, < 100kb each). I doubt there is much usable CJK font either.
> 
> do such (free) fonts exist?  if so, why not get them on ctan so they
> _will_ appear in texlive in due course?

There are some free Arabic fonts, but nothing great and mostly
decorative fonts for headings and titles. I'm working on an Arabic
font[1] that is very candidate for CTAN inclusion (partly sponsored
by TUG, too), it should be ready sometime in the next three months (I
have been saying for years, though) and should be on CTAN by then.

> it seems to me that we've quite a lot of "bits" of tex work for using
> middle eastern and north african languages, but nothing to draw them
> together.  it would be really pleasing if a focus could emerge, on
> putting the pieces together for such potential users.

That was my ultimate world domination plan behind involvement in
luaotfload and other stuff, when the font is released all the peaces
will be there and we would just need some glueing and polishing, I think
texlive 2011 should be a realistic target.

> however, what you say is (sadly) true just now

It is not sad, the situation is no better for other FOSS systems
either, almost all quality fonts are non-free anyway (when they exist)

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer