There has been talk recently about replacing the debian version of the TeX stuff with teTeX or NTeX.
I myself have been using NTeX and have found it very good. The only problem is that because I haven't installed the debian versions of TeX, when I want to install another package that wants you have have TeX stuff, eg lyx etc, dselect wants you to install all the TeX stuff. It would be much nicer to have something like NTeX as part of the official Debian distribution. Some time ago, I emailed the creator of NTeX, Frank Langbein. He runs debian himself, so I asked him about the possibility of debianizing his distribution. He said that he wouldn't and gave the following reasons: > To provide a debian package I would have to reconstruct all the install > procedures, etc. Once thing that will no longer be possible is the free > choice of the various installation directories. And if I use the special > debian package dependencies I have to provide a binary for installation. > This causes trouble if NTeX is install on any non-Linux system. Currently > I'm rather happy with the installation scripts form NTeX even if they are > a bit slow. Since I'm not part of the debian project I prefer to have my > own packaing system. Can any of his concerns be addressed? I know very little about the mechanics of the Debian package system, but could the packaging system be made more general so that the same packaging system could be used on multiple platforms? Ie, if the debian packaging tools were general enough, he (or another volunteer) could distribute NTeX using these tools, not just on debian systems, but on a range of platforms. Perhaps the debian package tools could be modified to provide the flexibility needed for use on a range of systems. Each system would then set parameters to mold the packaging system to the platform in question. The Debian packaging system would be simply one version of a more generic packaging system. Perhaps what I'm suggesting is simply infeasible, but it's worth asking. It would be great if somehow NTeX could be packaged for Debian. Mark Phillips. ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
