live ConTeXt

live ConTeXt

[Piotr Kopszak]

Good evening, 

As there are  plenty of live linux distributions on  CDs I was wondering
if there is  one that includes ConTeXt. It  should be relatively easy
to make one based on KNOPPIX (my computer is too weak though). Please,
let me know if you find one. 

Piotr



-- 
   Piotr Kopszak, Ph.D.          
   Polish Art Gallery, National Museum in Warsaw    
   ----------------------------->    http://kopszak.mnw.art.pl/ 

Re: live ConTeXt

[George N. White III]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Piotr Kopszak wrote:

> As there are  plenty of live linux distributions on  CDs I was wondering
> if there is  one that includes ConTeXt. It  should be relatively easy
> to make one based on KNOPPIX (my computer is too weak though). Please,
> let me know if you find one.

ConTeXt often needs little fixes, so a simple way to install updates and
generate new efmt files is needed.  Thus it isn't really practical to
rely entirely on a CD-based distro, and in any case, you need something
other than ram to write the output files.  You will do better to stick
with a robust distro like knoppix and find a way to use ConTeXt.

XP users can have texmf trees in their hard disk user data area that
knoppix can read, but writing to NTFS seems a bit dodgy.
Knoppix does, however, include everything you need to create user
accounts with specific UID/GID and mount NFS directories, so if you
can arrange a suitable NFS server, everything can live there.  All
this can be done using knoppix.sh to start the necesary services
and unpack a new home directory from a user.tbz file.  You will need
to save a configs.tbz after adding the required group and user passwd
entry (vigp, adduser, vipw, etc) and creating an fstab entry
for the nfs mount.

Here is the relevant section from a tweaked knoppix.sh:

echo "^[[1mStarting daemons...^[[0m"
for i in  ifupdown networking portmap nfs-common sysklogd ; do
    [ -x /etc/init.d/$i ] && /etc/init.d/$i start; done
[ -d "$1" ] && CONFIGS="$1/TEXUSER.tbz"
[ -f "$CONFIGS" ] || CONFIGS="/mnt/floppy/TEXUSER.tbz"
if [ -f "$CONFIGS" ]; then
echo "^[[1mExtracting config archive $CONFIGS...^[[0m"
tar -jpPxf "$CONFIGS" ; chown -R UID.GID /home/TEXUSER
fi
mkdir /mnt/NFS_SERVER && mount /mnt/NFS_SERVER

The usual config.tbz file will provide modified fstab, group, passwd, etc.
files.  The TEXUSER.tgz file can provide scripts to add TeX to the
user's PATH, etc.  Use "su TEXUSER" to become the new user.

--
George N. White III  <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
  Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada

Re: live ConTeXt

[Willi Egger]

Hi Piotr,

There are several possibilities to get a running TeX-system. Normally 
the freely distributed CDs contain a fairly outdated set of files 
including also an aged ConTeXt-version. I would suggest to download TeX 
live from CTAN. Otherwise GUST should be able to provide you an 
up-to-date TeX live. If you have a running TeX system but no ConTeXt you 
can fetch ConTeXt archives from www.pragma-ade.com


Kind regrds
Willi

Piotr Kopszak wrote:

> Good evening, 
> 
> As there are  plenty of live linux distributions on  CDs I was wondering
> if there is  one that includes ConTeXt. It  should be relatively easy
> to make one based on KNOPPIX (my computer is too weak though). Please,
> let me know if you find one. 
> 
> Piotr
> 
> 
> 

Re: live ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

At 19:23 17/02/2004, George N. White III wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Piotr Kopszak wrote:
>
> > As there are  plenty of live linux distributions on  CDs I was wondering
> > if there is  one that includes ConTeXt. It  should be relatively easy
> > to make one based on KNOPPIX (my computer is too weak though). Please,
> > let me know if you find one.
>
>ConTeXt often needs little fixes, so a simple way to install updates and
>generate new efmt files is needed.  Thus it isn't really practical to
>rely entirely on a CD-based distro, and in any case, you need something
>other than ram to write the output files.  You will do better to stick
>with a robust distro like knoppix and find a way to use ConTeXt.
>
>XP users can have texmf trees in their hard disk user data area that
>knoppix can read, but writing to NTFS seems a bit dodgy.
>Knoppix does, however, include everything you need to create user
>accounts with specific UID/GID and mount NFS directories, so if you
>can arrange a suitable NFS server, everything can live there.  All
>this can be done using knoppix.sh to start the necesary services
>and unpack a new home directory from a user.tbz file.  You will need
>to save a configs.tbz after adding the required group and user passwd
>entry (vigp, adduser, vipw, etc) and creating an fstab entry
>for the nfs mount.

One problem with linux programs is that sometimes paths are coded in the 
hard way, for instance, SciTE comes with hard coded paths and  therefore 
cannot be run from cd

Hans



                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE/POD/CTS
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
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