i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[David Wooten]

Greetings all,

By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting  
needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to  
install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, etc.  
I am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.

Perhaps it would vary too much between users to say definitively?

In any case,
Thanks very much
David 

Re: i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:23:17 -0700, David Wooten <dw@trichotomic.net>  
wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting  
> needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to  
> install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, etc. I  
> am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.
>
> Perhaps it would vary too much between users to say definitively?

Such a distro exists for windows. Someone would have to take  
responsibility for a Mac setup, and I suppose that's one reason why Hans  
has not (yet) a similar package for Mac (or Linix)

Best

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Re: i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen]

Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:23:17 -0700, David Wooten <dw@trichotomic.net>  
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting  
>> needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to  
>> install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, etc. 
>> I  am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.
>>
>> Perhaps it would vary too much between users to say definitively?
>
>
> Such a distro exists for windows. Someone would have to take  
> responsibility for a Mac setup, and I suppose that's one reason why 
> Hans  has not (yet) a similar package for Mac (or Linix)

a minimal is:

- the smallest complete context tree possible (lots of fonts)
- platform related binaries

(minimal trees can be used (and are faster than the distributed big 
ones) and i myself prefer such small trees in server processes)

i do generate them for all platforms that i run into but i must admit 
that i don't keep the mac binaries as up to date as needed; the reason 
is that Gerben keeps his installer very up to date, so for the average 
tex user on the mac a minimal tree is mainly a reference tree; the best 
person to ask hwo to do a latexless install on the mac is Gerben

Hans

Re: i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[Gerben Wierda]

On Jan 10, 2006, at 21:22, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

>> By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting 
>> needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to 
>> install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, etc. 
>> I am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.

If someone can tell me which part of my redistro should stay, I can 
easily rearrange matters such that such a minimal install is possible.

G

Re: i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:00:19 -0700, Gerben Wierda <Gerben.Wierda@rna.nl>  
wrote:

> On Jan 10, 2006, at 21:22, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
>
>>> By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting  
>>> needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to  
>>> install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, etc.  
>>> I am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.
>
> If someone can tell me which part of my redistro should stay, I can  
> easily rearrange matters such that such a minimal install is possible.

In addition to Hans' comments, I would suggest just taking the independent  
windows package

http://www.pragma-ade.com/context/install/mswincontext.zip

and replacing the windows-specific stuff (e.g. batch files and  
executables) with osx stuff. That should do it!

Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Re: i-Installer / minimal TeX installation for ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen]

Gerben Wierda wrote:

> On Jan 10, 2006, at 21:22, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
>
>>> By and by I've found that I am only using ConTeXt for my typesetting 
>>> needs. I am curious as to whether someone can advise me how best to 
>>> install a suitable yet minimal TeX installation:  without LaTeX, 
>>> etc. I am currently using Gerben's very helpful i-Installer.
>>
>
> If someone can tell me which part of my redistro should stay, I can 
> easily rearrange matters such that such a minimal install is possible.

since the minimals have many fonts, they are not that small; they use 
the [10pt] subsets of cbgreek and cmsuper [karl bery and i hav ebeen 
playing with subsets and if i'm right tex live now also ships with 
subsets] which saves  many megs;

the minimals also don't have latex and other macro packages (only plain 
tex as this is used in mptopdf); this may safe quite some megs (as well 
as speeds up file searching) because latex ships with sourcetrees as well

also, nothing metafont is included

plus a subset of binaries, think of:

afm2pl
afm2tfm
aleph
dvips
dvitodvi
dvitomp
dvipdfmx
kpseaccess
kpsestat
kpsewhich
mktexlsr
mpost
mpto
pdfetex
pltotf
texmfstart
tftopl
ttf2afm
ttf2tfm
vftovp
vptovf

(+ xetex)
(+ some tool stubs)

it's still on taco/mine's agenda to set up a gforce minimal repos at 
fabrice's server for packagers

Hans