[texworks] texworks ubuntu package

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

On 2009-12-17 14:39, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> I do not know who currently maintains ubuntu texworks package...

I am ;) (at least if you are referring to the one on Launchpad).

> ...but you have added too much dependencies and as far as I can see,
> most of people use TL>=08 so when someone sees too much dependencies
> from TL07, he will just ignore the package and hence it becomes
> useless. My suggestion is to remove TL dependicies because honestly it
> does not make sense at all. Obviously someone who has been thinking of
> using texworks, already have a running TeX distribution.

This has been brought up recently. In fact, I have not added TL as a
dependency - I've added TL as a recommendation. Unfortunately, recent
Ubuntu releases seem to treat recommendations as must-have by default,
so they look like dependencies. This can be changed in the Symantec
settings or with a command line switch. I basically had two options
(cited from the Debian package manager guide
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ch-dreq.en.html):
Recommends: Use this for packages that are not strictly necessary but
are typically used with your program.
Suggests: Use this for packages which will work nicely with your program
but are not at all necessary.

You can't deny that TL (in general) is typically used with Tw.
Furthermore, I wouldn't consider LaTeX as "not at all necessary". The
problem is that Ubuntu (still) ships with an old version of TL.

On the other hand I could remove TL completely from the list of programs
related to Tw. This could leave people who are fairly new to LaTeX/Tw
with an essentially useless program (if they only install Tw without
TL), however, without any possibility to easily see or fix the problem.
This is what the recommendations are for, anyway.

So, I realize that there is a problem here, but I'm unsure as to how to
fix it. Any suggestions anyone (in particular from those who maintain Tw
elsewhere)?

Regards,
Stefan