[texhax] Collection for social sciences and the humanities for TeXLive 2006

[Uwe Lück]

At 15:08 19.09.06, Juergen Fenn wrote:
>Uwe Lück <uwe.lueck at web.de> writes:
>
> > [Better ignore: two men misunderstanding each other
> >   -- concerning TeXLive here -- I don't expect a reply]
>
>Not two men, but three: "When will we three meet again...?" ;-)

:-))

>Well, if you don't expect a reply why do you bother sending this mail,
>then, Uwe?

In general, one shouldn't expect a reply anyway. But sometimes
things are different. This time I don't need a reply urgently,
and I don't want to bother anyone much; I'm just curious whether
somebody is interested and has a good idea. -- Sometimes I
include a few posters as addressees who have contributed earlier,
so they might be interested and like to contibute something again.
But I would like to make clear that I won't mind if they don't answer.

>I am a bit suprised that my question for help has triggered
>this comprehensive a discussion... Hopefully, the misunderstanding can
>be cleared up.

Originally, Christian Tapp hired me for working on ednotes for
critical editions. He told me about colleagues who had many sorts
of difficulties in installing LaTeX packages ("humanities"!).
-- So Alex Rozhenko and the CTAN Team worked hard
to make installing and updating of ednotes as easy as possible.

ednotes may be somwhat special in as much it really doesn't
work without lineno, manyfoots, and nccfoots.

In the meantime, I have learnt that the symlinks helping here
cause difficulties for others (Karl, e.g.).

I am thinking much about this. I have learnt that other package
authors (like Peter Wilson -- memoir) just copy code from other
authors. This way updating means downloading a single file.
I really ponder this approach. Christian Tapp has somewhat urged
me to the same direction.

> >>     Now, it is not clear to me what will be on TL-Social concerning
> >>
> >>Your use of "TL-Social" puzzles me.  What Juergen has done is a new
> >>collection within TL, not a whole distribution that will have a separate
> >>existence.
> >
> > [What is a "collection" as opposed to a "distribution" with "separate
> > existence"?]
>
>Collection-humanities is part of the TeX Live distribution. It is not
>a seperate TeX distro.
>
> >>      ... not found. Please input another file name:
> >>
> >>I don't know.  But the default is and will be to install all packages,
> >>so a user will have to override that default to run into such issues.
> >
> > [Sorry, when "all packages are installed", what for is the
> > "collection"?]
>
>Uwe, do you know TeX Live at all?

No, indeed, (sorry!?)!

>TeX Live is divided into several
>sets of packages fit for a particular purpose. These sets are called
>collections.  This way, you can "compose" you personal TeX distro by
>selecting collections from the choice provided. A complete install is
>recommended, but you can install less packages by selecting
>collections individually.
>
>So your concerns about packages from collection-humanities not working
>properly is unfounded because if someone doesn't choose a complete
>install it is the normal way in TeX Live to post-install the
>collections that contain packages which you find are missing for the
>job you want to do. It is impossible to provide collections that do
>not rely at all on one another. So, there is no reason to worry
>neither to change anything more about collection-latexextra etc.

This increases my confidence in your work considerably
-- while I still don't understand. But there are many other things
in life that I don't understand, so let's just go on ...

Best,

Uwe.