Re: distro info

["Thomas A. Schmitz" <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>]

On Jun 14, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Oliver Buerschaper wrote:

> Actually, I strongly disagree with the opinion that the only way to
> properly interact with TeX is via the command line.
>
> Counter example: in Mac application development your IDE of choice
> will almost certainly be Xcode. Although it delegates the entire
> compilation process to gcc you *never* ever see the command line. And
> there's no need to. All errors and warnings output by gcc are
> intercepted and passed on to you via the graphical IDE and you won't
> lose a tiny bit of information. In fact you gain a lot when trying to
> track down a problem ...
>
> Furthermore, in my humble opinion interaction with TeX should
> concentrate on programming the actual typesetting language and not on
> fumbling around with dozens of configuration files ... for instance,
> if you develop applications you wouldn't want to reconfigure your
> compiler twice a week either but rather focus on the source code *you*
> write.
>
> Oliver

Who said that "the only way to properly interact with TeX is via the  
command line"? What I said is: you can provide all the GUI tools you  
want, at some point (and this will be rather sooner than later)  
problems will crop up, and these problems will be impossible to  
resolve if you don't want to use the command line, don't want to learn  
about PATH settings, don't want to learn about where configuration  
files go and what they do. This may be different in, say 10 years, but  
it would be misleading to pretend that it is different today. TeXLive  
2008 is just being tested, and in this regard, it's no better than its  
predecessors. Unless and until we have systems which will be easier to  
maintain, users who expect to be able to stay away from the CLI are  
bound to be disappointed.

Your example about Apple's Xcode actually proves my point: I said that  
if you can afford to throw a couple of million $ and a dozen  
programmers at this, it is actually feasible (but will still take  
time). Apple has done just that; the Xcode IDE hasn't been built by  
volunteers in their spare time, now has it? So far, nobody has done  
anything similar for TeX, and I had the impression that the volunteer  
programmers who are actively contributing to it seem more interested  
in adding new features and improving the code than in adding a  
colorful pointy-clicky interface. But of course my impression could be  
wrong and someone is already building such a GUI as we speak...

As for "fumbling around with dozens of configuration files": such  
exaggerations are not very helpful in this discussion.

Thomas
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