[Xy-pic] Quick question on INSTALL.* texts

[Ross Moore]

Hi Kris,

On 29/04/2010, at 6:10 AM, Kristoffer H Rose wrote:

> Ross: Just quickly: do we still need the INSTALL.OzTeX and  
> INSTALL.Textures documents in the Xy-pic release?

I'd doubt that anyone still uses OzTeX.
It has been unsupported for years.
TeXshop is much better for TeX on a Mac.

Textures, however, is supposed to have had a re-birth.
I've not used it, so it's not at all clear whether it
still uses its own \special syntax -- I'd guess that
yes it does, though may now handle the dvips ones too.

>
> Everyone: anyone still using OzTeX and Textures with manual  
> installations of Xy-pic?

But as with all things TeX, they should not be deleted,
but stored away somewhere, accessible from the website,
so that they could be re-used in 10-15 years time,
if really needed. A paragraph in the manual can mention
that such an archive exists, with a link to it.

The life-cycle of new editions of technical books can be
of this kind of length, but that of hardware and software
upgrades is much shorter. So it may well become necessary
to maintain access to software modules used decades earlier.

>
> Cheers, Kris
> __


Hope this helps,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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