[texworks] Project Management type stuff

[Alain Schremmer]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 11:15 PM, Paul A Norman wrote:

> Your point about new users who are not going to (or want to even) play
> around with config files or working through thier TeX distro utilities
> is a fact of life I have come to accept, and would like to do what i
> can to help people who could otherwise well use LaTeX through tools
> like TeXworks, or perhaps they will pass LaTeX and family by.
>
> What I am exploring is whether this will always work on say Windows or
> any other OS, becasue it apparently depends on both OS and on the
> differing *TeX releases being used.


My particular problem is that the people who download the stuff from  
the site, currently about a thousand a month, are probably not  
interested in the least in writing but only in using the stuff. Hence  
ADM. But I have not heard from anyone trying it with Linux. For that  
matter, I don't even know how ADM works with Windows. Did you try it?

>
> In Miktex I can set user directories that Miktex will look in for user
> written packages, and documentation for mthelp shell command to find.
> But that is not what I am wantng to do here.
>
> Bruno Voisin and Stefan's thoughts, and Peter Flynn (over on another
> list), suggest to me very strongly that we are not  going to find one
> shoe to fit all with this.
>
> So I am thinking that it may be possible to QtScript this in some way
> to detect the OS and distro found by Tw (held in preferences) and
> re-write relative file paths in the document preamble \usepackage{} as
> required for the current documents OS and TeX distro.
>
> We may need to enter them in a commented area and TwScript will
> rewrite them in appropriately?
>
> This may mean exposing those Tw distro info preferences for read only
> access to TwScripting?
>
> First I will need to research the thing thoroughly, if I can not find
> someone who has already.
>
> If sucessful, at worse this would only require encouraging
> collaberators, or letting people know who download your stuff Alain,
> that this will work if they use TeXworks, and may not always work
> otherwise depending on OS and LaTeX distro.
>
> I see that you are already needing to put notes in your download - has
> anyone tried it on a linux dsitro?

For the better or for the worse, the stuff has to work like an  
application. Which means that it has to require zero LaTeX knowledge  
at least at the level of the people most likely to use the stuff,  
namely two-year college math instructors.

Regards,
--schremmer