From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 11 12:37:44 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58A3965B for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:37:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jamie@kode5.net) Received: from kontrol.kode5.net (kontrol.kode5.net [80.229.5.32]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAC518FC17 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:37:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: from kontrol.kode5.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kontrol.kode5.net (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q9BCbfYL087419 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:37:41 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from jamie@kode5.net) Received: (from jamie@localhost) by kontrol.kode5.net (8.14.5/8.14.5/Submit) id q9BCbeNQ087418 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:37:40 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from jamie@kode5.net) X-Authentication-Warning: kontrol.kode5.net: jamie set sender to jamie@kode5.net using -f Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:37:40 +0100 From: Jamie Paul Griffin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd-texlive port Message-ID: <20121011123740.GA87308@kontrol.kode5.net> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20121010015528.GA29059@shellx.eskimo.com> <20121010130144.GA12086@osx.kode5.net> <20121010174925.bf530323.freebsd@edvax.de> <20121010160144.GA13359@kontrol.kode5.net> <20121010203243.GA705@kontrol.kode5.net> <20121011000342.bb5dc60e.freebsd@edvax.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: x-operating-system: FreeBSD 9.1-PRERELEASE amd64 x-pgp-fingerprint: A4B9 E875 A18C 6E11 F46D B788 BEE6 1251 1D31 DC38 x-pgp-key: 1D31DC38 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97.6 at kontrol.kode5.net X-Virus-Status: Clean X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:37:44 -0000 [ Antonio Olivares wrote on Thu 11.Oct'12 at 6:39:00 -0500 ] > The efforts by Romain Tartiere should not go unnoticed. For many > years now, he has a port to texlive: > > https://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/ > > It works with the FreeBSD tools that you mention and it updates the > packages using the FreeBSD infrastructure. It happens that many > people install texlive through the dvd and make several changes so > that the tetex binaries do not get called on. > > I have the freebsd-texlive port installed and it works beautifully. I > can typeset books which require it. I also use KerTeX, > > http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html > > which is smaller and also works great in its own right. What is > kerTeX: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/42234/what-is-kertex > > For many users kerTeX would do the job for many texing/latexing needs. > However for bigger jobs, i.e, bigger books with many style files, & > bigger macros then texlive is needed. TeTeX does work well for many > things, but it is *NOT MAINTAINED, NOT UPDATED* despite the efforts of > some people and packages like tikz don't work well *unless you can > patch things up in the tex structure to make them work*. Yes I agree. As well as Romain, Nikola Lecic has done a great deal of work with getting texlive made available for FreeBSD - I'm sure there are others as well. I recall a couple of years ago, tug.org completely removed support for FreeBSD which prompted, I believe, the projects that Romain and Nikola started. Thanks to Nikola, who I *think* is still involved with the texlive project and namely support for FreeBSD, this problem no longer exists and the texlive distribution now supports FreeBSD. KerTeX is something I've yet to try, but I'm extremely interested in what it has to offer. It's innovative and a remarkable amount of work and certainly worth using for those using TeX regularly. NetBSD, or rather pkgsrc, and Linux software packaging systems as I'm sure you know have broken it down into portions of the distribution which is a sensible approach as modest users of TeX will most likely use only a small percentage of the software that comes with texlive. Perhaps a similar approach could be implemented into the FreeBSD ports system. I do think moving away from tetex for good is needed now. With all the changes to FreeBSD going on, ports relying on a dead project like tetex seems wrong.