On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Timothy Reaves wrote:
Hmpf. And do you blame OpenOffice if it cannot print on your brand new
ColorMatic3200, just because you do not have the drivers? After all,
there is this enticing "Print" menu! (OK, this is unfair, but in this
respect I plead tit-for-tat :)
Let's take your example about a printer driver. When I want a new
printer driver, I download the driver, run the installer, and done. I can
use the new printer. By your example above, you imply directly that the same
can be done with TeX packages.
So, where is the package I download for nomencl, that when I double
click on it it will install, and all is well. Oh, wait a minute, such
things don't exist! Your analogy fails. Horribly.
That's your analogy - not his. He only said that it's up to the user to
install the driver.
<<Temporarily getting off-topic>>
Speaking of drivers, due to the indentation and line breaking in your
posts I find them a bit difficult to read. (I read a text version btw).
Here's how it looks for me:
-BEGIN-------------------
But I don't know. And the docs you find online simply state to
install
them into their correct locations.
A solution doesn't have to be some large, complex C++ monstrosity.
It
can be as simple as user-contributed packages, even OS specific. Have a
-END----------------------
Could you do something about that?
<<Getting back on topic>>
Whereas a package manager may be nice, it's not really needed. Why
couldn't LyX users, who know what they're doing, bundle up sets of styles
(don't know the proper name for each type of TeX 'thing'), use a
cross-platform install product, and there you go. If I knew the proper
location of these files, I'd do it. I'd volunteer.
But I don't know. And the docs you find online simply state to
install them into their correct locations.
One problem is that the "correct loction" will vary quite a bit depending
on the system.
I've probably lost track of what we're talking about now, but is LaTeX
package management really directly related to LyX? In my opinion managing
the packages is outside LyX's scope, and also way be beyound our
resources.
Documenting what packages are needed by what layouts etc is of course
something that's needed. Similarly, using e.g. the wiki to give
instructions on where/how to add packages is something else that everyone
can do. That's probably not a bad way to start... i.e. figure out some
simple step-by-step "recipes" for how install packages on some of the more
common systems.
A possibly stupid idea, but have you trieed googling for e.g.
latex package management osx
I did a quick search, and something called i-installer came up.
http://ii2.sourceforge.net/tex-index.html
Unfortunately it seems to just have been stopped being supported. But
maybe there already are other package managers that can be used?
MPM is another, although I don't know if it works on OS-X. Still, these
are really questions for a group of LaTeX experts...
Some one would just need to help me understand what goes where, and how
they tie back to LyX.
I'm not so sure the question is really how they tie back to LyX... I'd say
the question is how they tie to the LaTeX installation. As long as the
LaTeX installation can find the packages, LyX will too. I mean, LyX
doesn't use the packages directly - LaTeX does that.
Best regards
/Christian
--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
