[texworks] integrating TeX Works into TeX Live

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 15 March 2009 Manuel P?gouri?-Gonnard wrote:

 > Norbert Preining a ?crit :
 > > On Di, 10 M?r 2009, Karl Berry wrote:
 > >> Norbert -- Jonathan and I discussed this briefly a few weeks ago.  I
 > >> agree that we certainly cannot include TW in the TeX Live source tree.
 > >> However, we felt that we could ask any of the TL builders who cared to
 > >> try to build it, as a separate package (kind of like the clisp madness
 > >> for xindy), and construct TL packages from the results.  I admit the
 > >> details are lacking.
 > > 
 > > That would be really fine. Agreed.
 > > 
 > Sorry but I don't really agree. I'm not sure making texworks into a
 > TL package is a good idea. What about texworks updates? Will the
 > person who built it for a particular architecture for the TL'09
 > release be willing to buld new binaries for every release of
 > TeXworks? What if the user wants to update manually?

Sorry, I agree with Karl and Norbert.  I know that the autoconf stuff
has to be done and that it's a lot of work.  But on the other hand,
it's the only way to get binaries for all platforms.

 > In my opinion, is is better to consider TeXworks as a separate
 > piece a software, and just have it (optionally) installed by the
 > wizard installer on windows, and nothing else. On Linux the
 > distribution's package manager should handle it, on OS X there is
 > already MacTeX, only on windows should we make it an option to
 > install TeXworks during TeX Live's install process.

I don't want to rely too much on the Linux distribution I'm using,
Gentoo switched from teTeX to TeX Live about a year ago and the
current version is still TL-2007.  Don't know how long I have to wait
for TeXworks.

Of course, TeXworks is still work in progress and maybe people are
interested in updates.  But I fear that Jonathan can only provide
binaries for the platforms he is using himself.  Hence, maintainers
for all the other platforms are needed.

 > Technically, TeXworks is "just another TeX IDE". Of course it is
 > the IDE of choice to be bundled with TL for the benefit of
 > newcomers, so that they ideally just click a button and have a
 > working TeX environment in Windows just as OS X users currently
 > do. But from a maintainer's point of view, I don't thinks it needs
 > to be considered a TL package.

I wouldn't consider it a TL package either.  It should be in the TL
Build tree, not in texmf.  It's more comparable with Xindy, which is
not updated between TL releases.  It's fine if we have a beta version
in TL-2009 and a quite stable version in TL-2010.

Yes, technically, TeXworks is "just another TeX IDE".  But unlike all
the other TeX shells, it's multi-platform and fits much better into
TeX Live.  I think it should be part of TeX Live.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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