[OS X TeX] updated packages

[Gerben Wierda]

> Gerben,
>
> Your statement that teTeX is dead, a better phrase might be that it
> won't be updated any longer, surprises me, since I considered teTeX
> to be the premier unix installation of tex  which would be
> rejuvenated under all circumstances, if not by Thomas Esser than by
> someone else from the tex community.

teTeX as a separate entity seems dead to me. But the scripts etc. live on
in TeX Live and are still maintained by Thomas who contributes to TeX
Live.

But the separate nicely sized texmf tree is dead, I think.

> Assuming that your assessment is correct, and I am not challenging
> it, then I would recommend to keep the present  tetex texmf tree and
> update only the packages, if necessary. Maybe you can also merge your
> own gwtex with the main tree.

No, my best option seems to move to TeX Live entirely and create a subset
from TeX Live's Master texmf tree that is equivalent to the current teTeX3
texmf tree.

I like a lot I hear about MikTeX, except that for me it seems as
vulnerable as teTeX in terms of support, which will be a main reason for
me not to use it. Basically, I would like to see TeX Live as *the* one
reference source of TeX. Sadly, though, Windows seems not to be seen as an
equal citizen there. I have been at the sideline of all of that, but that
is my feeling. On Mac OS X we have the advantage we are a unix, hence
whatever unixy-happens, it mostly will not hurt us.

In my ideal world there is one basic TeX reference distro (TeX Live being
the #1 candidate) from which other (re)distros draw, all competing to
offer the best maintenance UI to the user.

A model I would like is if the TeX master tree would be available for
anonymous rsync, one could set up efficient synchronizing to subsets on
local machines, but it would need a powerful rsync server setup (and/or
mirrors).

G

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