Re: distro info

[Jesse Alama <alama@stanford.edu>]

"Thomas A. Schmitz" <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de> writes:

> 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.

Let me add that I have no aversion at all to using command line tools.
The basis for my own comments in this thread do not lie in a preference
for graphical tools, but rather for a straightforward way to stay
up-to-date with the whole of ConTeXt in a way that ctxtools does not
currently provide.  A command-line interface for that would be great,
and so would a graphical tool.

I'm of course familiar with the minimals, but what's unpleasant about
that approach to staying current with ConTeXt is that one has to put
aside other installations.  What I mean, more specifically, is that
TeXlive is ignored.  As far as I can see, I can't both use latex and the
minimal ConTeXt in the same shell, because if I want to use the latter I
can't use the former.  For me an optimal solution would be a tool like,
say, ctxtools --updatecontext, that combines downloading the latest
binaries, fonts, and TeX code into one package, and overwrites the old
contents in my TeXlive tree.  A command-line tool to do that would
certainly be appreciated.

The discussion of environment variables leads me to wonder: is there a
definitive discussion of these?  I'm familiar with the TeXlive
documentation, but what more should users know to gain a mastery of
these variables in connection with ConTeXt?

Jesse

-- 
Jesse Alama (alama@stanford.edu)
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