On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Edd Barrett<vex...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 8/20/09, Igor Sobrado <igor.sobr...@gmail.com> wrote: >> we have a few problems here too (using TeX Live in both OpenBSD 4.6 >> and -current, on i386 and amd64); i would suggest sending a detailed >> bug report to the TeX Live developers at this mailing list: > > Ok, we need to consult upstream. Do you want to do that or shall I? > > tex-l...@tug.org.
i think that all of us need to consult upstream as we have different problems with TeX Live (e.g., in my case these problems are mostly core dumps from xdvi and some annoying messages about missing fonts (even with -full) when processing some TeX files in the documentation). > Does this happen on tl-2009? (the svn version) i haven't tried it; we are only using binaries from the repository, as TeX Live is mostly a tool for our work. to be honest, i never considered participating in the development of a TeX distribution. :-) >> (if these bugs are unknown, it is a good time to report them as TeX >> Live 2009 is being developed yet.) > > It's frozen. Sorry. I will be working on this at p2k9 (probably). i supposed they were willing to know about bugs yet: http://www.tug.org/texlive/pretest.html well, at least we can work improving TeX Live 2010. >> TeX distributions have been stable >> for decades; however, in the last years these distributions have grown >> out of control. we cannot expect a software package to require 1 GB >> and being stable yet. there is no way for so large packages to be >> fully tested. i do most of my work using either plain TeX or LaTeX2e. > > Yup. It's a big problem. I have been musing about a hybrid > texlive/miktex package which downloads stuff as needed, but I decided > against it. it sounds like a challenging work, more than a TeX Live port it was a new distribution itself. :-) >> XML support is a relatively new feature, so we should expect it being >> experimental. >> >> i would certainly be happy with a small TeX distribution that supports >> only plain TeX and LaTeX2e and a very small subset of packages. other >> packages can be easily imported from CTANs, and new features are... >> well... experimental yet. > > It's called -minimal :P That is equivilent to tetex. You can then make > your own texmf tree in your home dir. fine! i will try it some day. the TUG should consider is publishing a minimal list of packages that are required for any TeX distribution (and, as a consequence, used safely on any document to allow it being processed on any TeX installation), leaving the other ones as extension packages for more specialized uses or people wishing to do something non-standard. Even more, the classes for ACM or AMS publications should be downloaded from their respective organizations (assuring we have the most up to date classes installed). well, i am just dreaming.
