[XeTeX] Loading fonts from a common server or http URL

[David J. Perry]

Phil,

MiKTeX, available for Windows users, does exactly what you describe (if you 
give it permission to download missing packages automatically; you can turn 
that off if desired).  That's the main reason I use it in preference to 
TeXLive.  I realize it's not helpful for non-Windows folks, but it shows 
that your idea is not " pie in the sky."

David

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)" <P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk>
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 5:42 AM
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Loading fonts from a common server or http URL


>
>
> Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>
>> Well, in a sense with tlmgr we already have this. Only,
>> it is manual. Could write a cron script to run tlmgr to keep
>> the system uptodate.
>
> Yes, but that is TLMGR, and I am speaking of TeX !  In other
> words, if I write \usepackage {keyval}, I would like /TeX/
> to (a) look to see if I have keyval.cls locally; (b) if not,
> look to see in which package/bundle/whatever "keyval" lives;
> (c) fetch the p/b/w-h-y from CTAN; (d) un-p/b/w it into my
> local TeXMF hierarchy; (e) continue as if nothing had happened
> and the file had been local all the while.  It may sound
> "pie in the sky", but isn't this exactly what a sane, reasonable,
> TeX user would want to happen in the 21st century ?
>
> ** Phil.
>
>
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