Re: tex live and context

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> On Feb 22, 2007, at 5:40 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
>
>   
>>> after some testing taco and i found out that tl has recent map  
>>> files but
>>> that there's a problem with rsync and time outs on large trees,  
>>> which is
>>> why my local texlive copy is incomplete; so, it mostly depends on  
>>> what
>>> snapshot one uses
>>>       
>> This is exactly why I stick with mswincontext.zip, to avoid  
>> headaches like
>> this ;-)
>>
>> Idris
>>     
>
> Idris,
>
> I sympathize, but I think you're a bit unfair here. If I understand  
> Hans's mail right, he was not installing from the image, but rsyncing  
> his trees with TeXLive, and that's where the error was. I've been  
> running the development version for at least three months now (even  
> when it still was called 2006...) and haven't had any troubles,  
> especially wrt to fonts and packages. On a linux or OS X box, I would  
> even recommend installing it alongside the minimal and switch between  
> them to test things, but I have no idea if/how this is possible on  
> winblows.
>   
here i use the tex live tree (actually a merge of all tex live texmf trees, and depending on what version i also merge in free but not free enough for tex live) 

from that i draw the minimals 

i use minimals for projects because they run faster (smaller trees) and because i then can add fonts without interference as well as use a frozen version of context 

problems with tex live can be in

- fonts 
- patterns 
- generic files 

not being there, or being changed without notice, or being non generic any longer ... i still have to test the upcoming version but the last couple of years there was always one problem (maybe this years problem is the marvisym thing); 

for this reason, context no longer uses generic code, ships with its own patern files, and when needed uses its own map files etc. As soon as we move to luatex, we no longer need tfm etc and yet another dependency is gone 

of course one should always be careful when combining a tex live with a context update (for instance, context will move to tex-gyre fonts as soon as possible so best keep that up to date as well)

Hans 


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