[9fans] kerTeX install and setup

[9fans] kerTeX install and setup

[Akshat Kumar]

Dæmonic soufflés have no rôle in naïve œvres.

I decided to try kerTeX on Plan 9 earlier today.
I'm a bit displeased with the installation procedure.

Firstly, would the maintainer perhaps consider
putting this package up as a contrib install
(using fgb's contrib suite)? This would make the
process much smoother (I ran into a few bugs
in the shell scripts and had to do a few extra
binds to get out of a few other troubles).

In the actual placement of things, I think most
items of the installation are placed in accordance
with the general Plan 9 scheme, but I was a bit
baffled with the *.fmt, *.base, and *.log files going
in the /386/bin/lib/kertex directory - even /386/bin/lib
doesn't make sense to me. Consider changing this
to some place in /lib/kertex (I moved them to
/lib/kertex/tex/mac and changed the TEXDUMP
environment variable accordingly).

The manpage files end in *.1, which is probably a UNIX-ism.
On Plan 9, it should just be the command name without
a suffix.

I feel that the scheme should be that if you are
self-compiling kerTeX, then the installation should
go into $home/bin/386 and $home/lib - that is, be
confined to your $home. And for the global install
one can use the contrib package.

I mention these seemingly trivial things, because the
actual installation of this package is highly non-trivial.
Although it works around having to use autoconf hell,
it still has a rather complicated pre-install config setup.


Best,
ak

Re: [9fans] kerTeX install and setup

[Akshat Kumar]

Sorry for this - couple of things I felt were
important, but forgot to mention.

kertex/tex is too verbose for a command that
takes input from stdin by default. It would
be nice to get rid of the version header
and all that stuff (I'm already dreading the
re-compile and re-install processes).
And I feel it shouldn't produce a transcript
log by default (and place it in the current
dir). Perhaps consider a command-line
option for that?

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:35 AM, Akshat Kumar
<akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net> wrote:
> Dæmonic soufflés have no rôle in naïve œvres.
>
> I decided to try kerTeX on Plan 9 earlier today.
> I'm a bit displeased with the installation procedure.
>
> Firstly, would the maintainer perhaps consider
> putting this package up as a contrib install
> (using fgb's contrib suite)? This would make the
> process much smoother (I ran into a few bugs
> in the shell scripts and had to do a few extra
> binds to get out of a few other troubles).
>
> In the actual placement of things, I think most
> items of the installation are placed in accordance
> with the general Plan 9 scheme, but I was a bit
> baffled with the *.fmt, *.base, and *.log files going
> in the /386/bin/lib/kertex directory - even /386/bin/lib
> doesn't make sense to me. Consider changing this
> to some place in /lib/kertex (I moved them to
> /lib/kertex/tex/mac and changed the TEXDUMP
> environment variable accordingly).
>
> The manpage files end in *.1, which is probably a UNIX-ism.
> On Plan 9, it should just be the command name without
> a suffix.
>
> I feel that the scheme should be that if you are
> self-compiling kerTeX, then the installation should
> go into $home/bin/386 and $home/lib - that is, be
> confined to your $home. And for the global install
> one can use the contrib package.
>
> I mention these seemingly trivial things, because the
> actual installation of this package is highly non-trivial.
> Although it works around having to use autoconf hell,
> it still has a rather complicated pre-install config setup.
>
>
> Best,
> ak
>

Re: [9fans] kerTeX install and setup

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Jan 01, 2011 at 03:35:57AM -0800, Akshat Kumar wrote:
> Dæmonic soufflés have no rôle in naïve ?vres.
> 
> I decided to try kerTeX on Plan 9 earlier today.
> I'm a bit displeased with the installation procedure.
> 
> [...]

KerTeX is functional but is in early stages.

Until all is here (this means MetaPost and Bibtex), I will not put
extra time in... the documentation, since the mapping you are displeased
with is set by variables replaced at config time (and that can be
defined differently when calling the rkconfig), and you can provide
an absolutely different mapping by providing a different map.

There is a difference between the macro and the dumps: the dumps are
machine dependent since they are compiled macros. So, by default, they
go in a machine dependent sub-directory. Once more, this can be changed
by user.

These will be addressed (perhaps simply by saying: NO!) but later.

For changing the behavior of TeX, the answer is: TeX shall behave
exactly like documented in the TeXbook (same for METAFONT). If I have
introduced something that is not here, it will go. If it is in the book,
it will stay. The interactive session, is in the book. 

Cheers,
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C