[texworks] integrating TeX Works into TeX Live

[Victor Ivrii]

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Reinhard Kotucha
<reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> On 13 March 2009 Norbert Preining wrote:
>
>  > On Fr, 13 M?r 2009, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>  > >   $TEXMFHOME/texworks
>  >
>  > Which was up to TL2007, AFAIR, on Windows the same for all users,
>  > physically the same.
>
> Of course!  I'm glad that you remember that TL-2007 had been a
> crippled single platform/single user system.  But do you really
> believe that you can make it a multi user system by arbitrary
> spreading config files around the system?  No, TL-2007 is definitely
> not a multi user system.  It even didn't distinguish between a normal
> user and a system administrator.  Look into texmf.cnf for Windows.
> You'll see something like TEXMFHOME=TEXMFLOCAL.
>
> And as I said already, THERE ARE ENOUGH OTHER PROGRAMS WHICH ARE USING
> TEXMFHOME ALREADY FOR ABOUT TWO DECADES.  Why, the hell, do you insist
> on treating texworks as an exception.  Do you really want to go back
> to the stone-age?

I see few reasons"

1) Practical: Who is going to provide all binaries which may be
different not only from MacOX to RHL but also between MacOSX 10.4,
10.5 and 10.6 when it comes? TeXWorks should go to different locations
on different platforms

2) Ideological: TeXWorks are not part of TeX but a frontend and while
it may be superior to any other front end some people may like
something else due to some presumably weird reasons (I have a
colleague who enjoys the button orgy in WinEdit :-).  Installing THE
ONLY TRUE TEX FRONTEND would be equivalent to installing THE ONLY ONE
TRUE WEBBROWSER (which of course is Internet Exploder :-) or teaching
the students THE ONLY TRUE PHILOSOPHY (which of course is
Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, or Juche Ideas :-)


3) Practical again: See 2) and remember that some people can be very
loud "WTH it installs TeXWorks? I want my favorite TeXCrap!!!" BTW we
have enough confused people around who are saying that "My TeX is
TeXShop (or WinEdit).

4) Moral: often decision  belongs to people who actually do,
especially if they are volunteers

5) Practical again: if TL team decides not only not to install
TeXWorks but to install TeXJunk instead, can we make them? I would not
even try, especially essentially calling them Neanderthals.

Best, Victor



> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>



-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii