[texdvd] Volunteering to produce DVDs (US)

[Karl Berry]

    I am volunteering to produce/mail DVDs in the US (payment method
    undecided).

Thanks Terry!

    ...single-layer DVDs can accommodate 4.7GB "officially"

The cut-down TL that we've put on the TeX Collection DVD was 4.9G last
year.  It currently includes binaries for these systems (only):
  x86_64-cygwin
  x86_64-darwinlegacy
  x86_64-linux
  universal-darwin
  windows

I could take out one or more of those to (hopefully) make it fit, I
guess. Possibly some of the largest packages too (e.g., japanese-otf is
over 100MB).

But if people actually require binaries for the more obscure
architectures, or those excluded packages, I guess a separate DVD would
have to be burned. Not exactly trivial to make all that work out for the
users. It would be quite a lot of work to somehow make the installer
cognizant of two separate DVDs. Definitely don't want to go there.

Overall, I don't want to spend a lot of (or any, really) extra time
creating special installation methods for the DVD. Too much work for not
enough benefit. So I hope it can be made to work out without doing
anything new.

    much less *double-layer* or *dual layer* ...
    many people wouldn't have that burning capability (including me). 

Understood. I surmised as much.

    That would apply to *users* as well, so I assume DL is a no-go
    in general.

The TeX Collection DVD has had to be "dual-layer" for many years now,
and no users have reported problems reading it. But the burning side is
a stopper for dual-layer, regardless, seems to me.

    If there is a *printable PDF*, my suggestion is make that OPTIONAL

Certainly. The PDF and other such will just be sitting on the web
pages. Users who want it can read it.

    I think a *CGI form* as he suggested is an excellent idea.

I will work on putting up a draft form for people to look at.
(Eventually. Not too soon. :)

    That's my 2 cents --- I mean 10 cents (inflation).

Too true :(. --thanks, karl.