[ On Thu, September 24, 1998 at 21:36:42 (-0400), Todd Vierling wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: texinfo files 
>
> On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> : If texi2dvi(2) and texindex(2) are not installed how are users going to
> : get them if/when they do install TeX?
> 
> Have this part of the gtexinfo pkg, then,

This I don't like....  seems too redundant and inelegant.

> or a "texi2dvi" pkg which installs
> these bits as a dependency of the teTeX pkg.

this is better, but doesn't solve the problem for people who get TeX
some other way.  I don't think the pkg_* stuff should be the only
sanctioned way to install things.  NetBSD supports emulation of other OS
environments for the purpose of allowing people to use packages that are
intended for other platforms, and there are indeed 

> The alternatives aren't all that complex -- and we can't add software that
> is this nonfunctional in the base system.

????  I'm not so sure that's a problem in this case -- they'd be
immediately operational as soon as somone installed Tex.

If you're really worried that some luser might complain because he got a
non-sensical error message like "tex: not found", then it would be
fairly easy to write a stub "tex" script that explained how to obtain
and install the appropriate package for full functionality.  Such a stub
would have to be either removed or overwritten by the real TeX, of
course, and that might be a bit of a problem, but this could be worked
around by making the stub slightly more sophisticated -- i.e. it could
either recommend its own removal, utilize an environment variable that
would point at the real tex program, or it could even search for the
real tex in other directories in PATH and exec one if found.  (I like
the latter automatic exec idea best myself.)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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