Re: distro info

[Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net>]

Am 2008-06-13 um 19:08 schrieb Andrea Valle:
>> Sorry, you can't use TeX in a decent way if you can't use a shell  
>> (AKA
>> command line AKA Terminal AKA DOS box).
> That's not true.
> Installing mactex doesn't require you to use terminal.
> It comes with TeXShop. Works out of the box. That was my first =20
> ConTeXt experience. Positive.
> Then I went into some memory problems with MetaPost, then I had to =20
> modify some sources (thanks to Mojca) to work with XeTeX.
> Really a boring experience. Please don't tell me that the tree =20
> structure of the TeX distro is easy to understand and traverse.

You're right, the TeX tree is more of a shrubbery. And I don't say  
Ni ;-)

For directory trees I really like the Finder in columns mode - and  
it's great that you can just drag a file or folder to the Terminal to  
get its path inserted.

I stopped using TeXshop and iTeXMac (not a positive experience some  
years ago), because I often need to call ConTeXt (i.e. texexec) with  
different arguments, and that's overly complicated with GUI tools. And  
I found the (La)TeX integration more annoying than helpful for  
ConTeXt. iTeXMac's project "files" (app-like directories) are annoying  
as well.
I do most of my development in Eclipse or TextWrangler, but always  
with a Terminal or three.
I use a simple shell script for every project, that runs the main file  
with appropriate arguments, opens the resulting PDF (with LilyPond  
also the MIDI) and cleans the temp files afterwards.

Even with GUI layout projects I normally have a Terminal open - e.g.  
for quick (batch) renaming (renaming is one of the few really annoying  
mis-features of MacOS X - "YES I REALLY WANT TO CHANGE THE EXTENSION  
AND I KNOW WHAT I DO, DAMNED!").

You see, I'm not a shell dogmatist - I normally use vi only on remote  
servers, and I don't run EmacsOS - but I work much more efficiently if  
I can use a decent shell. (sh on AIX or CMD.EXE on Win2k is not a  
decent shell...)

>> Please everyone try to become computer literate!
>> (see also works by Friedrich Kittler)
> I agree with you. But it depends on what "computer literate" means.
...
> I'm teaching them SuperCollider and Nodebox.

Ok, I don't get those ;-)

> I'd like to teach =20
> ConTeXt focusing in computational typography, not into unix file =20
> system (even if it can be very relevant).
> Note also that from the previous posts I still have not exactly =20
> understood what I have to do to install Luatex (the famous  
> minimals), =20=
> and it seems that many people are confused like me on using system =20
> fonts.
> I'm scared of tweaking my actual XeConTeXt distro because to install  
> =20
> it has been a pain.

I know the pain.
It was always a hassle to get ConTeXt working with teTeX, even with  
gwTeX or MacTeX. (I never got it working with CMacTeX, but that was a  
previous chapter.)
The minimals solved it for me. As soon as I had understood how to use  
first-setup and setuptex.

Now I start setuptex in my .profile, so that every new Terminal is pre- 
configured. (You can also use .bashrc or .bash_profile)
And I run first-setup for updates regularly as a cron job, together  
with some other update scripts.

I still feel a bit uncomfortable with "systems fonts", too:
I activate fonts with FontExplorer as I need them, so ConTeXt normally  
can't find my fonts. We should try to write a XeTeX/LuaTeX-plugin for  
FontExplorer...
Before I had installed a lot of fonts in my personal texmf tree (where  
they don't eat my RAM), many of them I've only as PFB and can't use  
them as system fonts on OSX.
Besides that, a lot of "system fonts" aren't available for ConTeXt  
(fontconfig problems, I guess).

If I would use ConTeXt more often, I would have figured that out, I  
guess...

> --Apple-Mail-101-993969544
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> Content-Type: text/html;
> 	charset=ISO-8859-1

Oops, since when decided my Apple Mail to send MIME/HTML mails?? It  
mustn't do that...
Bad program, BAAAD program!


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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