[Wylug-help] Request for opinion: TeX Distros in Linux

[Dave Fisher]

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 09:12:59PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Debian (and therefore Ubuntu) provides two TeX systems:
> 
> teTeX
> TeX Live
> 
> teTeX is the traditional one, which is well tested and reliable, but
> is not very modular and so takes up a lot of disk space and has a
> slower pace of development than TeX Live.
> 
> TeX Live is very new in Debian, but probably has some slightly more up
> to date components (there's probably not much in it), or a few
> components teTeX is missing.  However, the modular TeXLive packaging
> may not be as good as the teTeX packaging, which is well tested--it
> has been the default (only) TeX system in Debian for many years.
> 
> Both are good systems, and both provide pretty much the same thing,
> just packaged slightly differently.  There really isn't a great deal
> to choose between them.  I'm currently using teTeX, but this is mainly
> due to inertia--it's been installed on my system for seven years as
> one version or another.
> 
> If you are wanting to use old documents, either system should process
> them perfectly.  Both systems should work identically.

Hi Roger,

Thanks for confirming my suspicions.  As you suggest, it turns out that
TeX Live does have lots more new (and quite exiting) stuff in it, but
the packaging is poorly documented  (i.e. hardly at all).

The fragility and all-round cruftiness of tools like OOo and Scribus
has, however, (quite literally) had me tearing my hair out ... so I'm
seriously considering re-conversion.

The only thing putting me off going back to TeX/LaTeX is the thought of
having to re-learn everything I've forgotten ... and then having to
learn a whole lot more (stuff I never knew, plus all the recent
innovations).

Despite those misgivings, the shere attraction of being able to produce
good looking, usable documents with 100% reliability has tempted me to
dip my toe back in to water.  

What I've found, however, has been rather disappointing.

To an even greater extent than Linux, the TeX community seems awash with
willing documenters, all completely bereft of any capacity to see the
problems (or systems)  they are describing from the point of view of the
inexperienced ...  to make matters worse, they all seem to think that is
cool to publish 95%+ of their web content in PDF only! ... gnnrr ...

I can't express the level of frustration this leaves me in.

I know that newer tools like pdflatex, pdftex, pdfetex, context,
omega/lambda, XeteX can do all sorts of things I want to do (e.g.
'simple' things like using typed unicode characters in truetype/opentype
fonts to directly generate PDF output), but I can't find a single decent
tutorial on how to configure a fully functional system.

For example, the ConTeXT site has a pretty good tutorial on how to use
the tool, but the install/config instructions are practically useless if
you aren't using tetex  

... of course I could use tetex, but then I'd be
missing out on all the goodies in texlive ...

... of course the Debian plans to allow both systems to run side by
side, but has barely started on the process ...

... meaning that they've messed around with all the standard TeX Live
paths, but not yet implemented any of the infrastructure to use the
'special' Debian filesystem layout ... ,etc., etc ...

Anyone know of a decent overview of TeX installations, written from a
system administration point of view?

Dave