[tex-live] tl17 pretest init

[Philip Taylor]

Mojca wrote :

>> [PT] But I still need to know how one learns of Norbert's "new bindings", or even the old ones; where are they to be found, and where are they documented ?
> It should be installed with tlpretest already.
> http://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/tlpkg/doc/tlmgr-shell.txt?view=markup
>
Thank you Mojca.

Norbert Preining wrote:

> Norbert's "new bindings"
> Try
> 	tlmgr shell
> You need to (in your program)
> * open a pipe to "tlmgr shell"
> * read the output of the program
> * send commands and interpret the output
>
Sending commands seems simple enough, but I need to learn how one can gain access to any answers programatically ...
> But you can start by writing a front end for tlmgr itself, that would
> be already great, and all the functionality is available via tlmgr shell.
>
> Documentation: tlmgr man page (you know by now what a man page is, we 
> explained it to you already), or the generated web page on tug.org.
> All the actions can be done in shell, too.
Ah, so the TeX Live installer and the TeX Live Manager are one and the same thing ?  I don't think I had ever fully realised that.

>> depends on some part of Chromium (Content module,
>> http://www.chromium.org/developers/content-module), it's just packaged
>> in a more user-friendly way, to make the barrier to entry lower.
>>
>> Sadly this is not an option for older versions of Mac OS X as it
>> requires 10.11 to build it and probably 10.9 to run it. They have
>> pretty hard requirements (not even C++11 alone is sufficient).
> Umpf, all these npm node stuff, I am always very suspect of them.
> Too unstable, unclear, in flux.
>
> I am thinking more of a python/gtk or so, or native C.
Yes, the need for "npm" worried me too -- I am still trying to find out how one installs "npm" in the first place -- but overall the solution seems a good one :  HTML, CSS and JavaScript is a very simple and straightforward way in which to express a limited-choice GUI.  As regards backwards compatibility for (e.g.,) earlier versions of the Apple Macintosh operating system, is this an issue ?  Can users therefore not continue to use the older installer, whilst more up-to-date users could use the new one if/when written ?  Just as we offer "Install-TL" with various options (GUI, Advanced, Microsoft Windows, ....) could we not do the same with different GUIs (GUI, Electron-Gui, etc.) ?

** Phil.