Re: TeXlive? Or any recent alternative?

["Pouya D. Tafti" <pouya%san-serriffe.org@localhost>]

On 11 September 2010 14:33, Hubert Feyrer <hubert%feyrer.de@localhost> wrote:
>
> Is there a recent version of TeXlive available that I'm missing?
>
> wip/texlive-bin got its last real change 2008,
> wip/texlive-texmf-base only has TeX files and no binaries,
> print/texlive-tetex apparently is not what's needed to use (La)TeX
>
> ... so what are the options to get a recent (La)TeX from pkgsrc?
> Kudos if it also works on Mac OS X and with
> pkgsrc/meta-pkgs/netbsd-doc-print

I hope not to offend anyone, as I really appreciate the effort that
has been put into importing texlive packages in pkgsrc.  Also, I
generally prefer the principled approach of pkgsrc to that of any
other package management system.  But for latex I eventually switched
to using texlive proper (which includes NetBSD-i386 binaries that run
fine under emulation on -amd64), for three reasons.

1. I was missing too many packages:

laptop$ cd /usr/pkgsrc/print
laptop$ echo * | wc -w
     535
laptop$ tlmgr list --only-installed | wc -l
    2088

So I tried to create new packages for those that I was missing.  BUT:

2. I could never quite figure out how to install and configure a tex
system properly through pkgsrc, and always faced rather non-obvious
dependency and configuration puzzles to solve (mostly related to font
dependencies that made latex packages fail with criptic error
messages).  I concede that my confusion and problems were, in all
likelihood, more related to (the overly complicated structure and
configuration of) texlive rather than pkgsrc.  But, on the other hand:

3. At work I use a Mac, for which an official texlive distribution
(MacTeX) is available.  I haven't had any of these issues there (and I
can close my eyes to whatever is going on in /usr/local/texlive, as
long as everything stays in one directory and is managed by a blackbox
called "tlmgr").

So, with a thesis deadline that has already been extended once, I
eventually chose the path of least resistance and switched to
something that "just works".

Pouya

P.S. If anyone wants to do anything related to texlive (either
updating pkgsrc or installing the whole beast separately) it is
perhaps best to wait for texlive 2010, which should be released
shortly (I hope).