[texworks] Linux Application Bundle of TeXworks released

Laurence Field appbundles at gmail.com
Sun Sep 6 16:10:32 CEST 2009


Many compliments to the developers on such a functional and enjoyable
program, at such an early stage in its development.

I have developed a system for distributing software on Linux which
bundles each program into a single folder which can be moved or
renamed arbitrarily by the user, much like on Mac OS X.  Appropriately
enough, they're called Application Bundles, and you can read about
them at http://www.appbundles.org/ .

One of the first applications I chose to build as a bundle was
TeXworks, and you can download it from
http://www.appbundles.org/getstarted.html .  This bundle is designed
to work on any Linux distribution from the past three or four years;
if you don't have Qt 4 installed, or you have too old a version, there
are some downloadable Qt 4 libraries provided that you can unpack
right next to TeXworks, and TeXworks will find them there.

I consider it a bug if this bundle fails to work on a reasonable Linux
distribution of the past few years, so please let me know if you are
having problems.

I have made this build using a Poppler patch which allows for subpixel
rendering of text in PDF files---I find this sharpens the somewhat
spindly Computer Modern glyphs on screen quite considerably.

I'd love to have people's feedback, both on this build of TeXworks and
on the concept of Application Bundles more generally for Linux.  I've
make the user interface a main aim of the Application Bundles project,
so let me know of any complaints or suggestions.

Another benefit of the Application Bundle approach is that one binary
is downloadable and supportable on all recent Linux distributions,
rather than having to package TeXworks separately for each version of
each distribution.

If the TeXworks developers review this build and find it to be
satisfactory, you are more than welcome to link to the Application
Bundle download site from the TeXworks main site, as an easy way for
people to obtain Linux builds, independent of distribution.

Thanks again for a great program.

Laurence Field


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