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TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!)

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  TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2016-04-08 23:12 +0000
    Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 05:03 +0000
      Re: TeXLive on Slackware John Forkosh <forkosh@panix.com> - 2016-04-11 07:11 +0000
        Re: TeXLive on Slackware Joost Kremers <joost.m.kremers@gmail.com> - 2016-04-11 08:59 +0000
          Re: TeXLive on Slackware jfbu <jfREMOVEbu@free.fr> - 2016-04-11 11:41 +0200
            Re: TeXLive on Slackware JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2016-04-13 02:20 +0000
        Re: TeXLive on Slackware Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 21:07 +0000
      Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Joost Kremers <joost.m.kremers@gmail.com> - 2016-04-11 08:54 +0000
        Re: TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!) Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-11 21:12 +0000
          Re: TeXLive on Slackware Qun-Ying <zhu.qunying@gmail.com> - 2016-04-13 11:13 -0700
            Re: TeXLive on Slackware Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2016-04-13 18:39 +0000

#26622 — TeXLive on Slackware (was: Re: Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!)

Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie> wrote:
> On 04/07/2016 11:26 PM, JohnF wrote:
> [...]
>> Question: Is there some tl-lite distribution, or some install-tl 
>> script that >>automatically<< lightens it up? Slackware has stuck 
>> with teTeX because tl is too "heavy". While it's easy enough to run
>> install-tl and manually choose components, it would be nice to have a
>> maintained install-tl-lite script so that the Slackware team could
>> easily package tl with their linux distribution. I'd guess they'd
>> want something in the ~250MB size (that's about what their teTeX
>> uses).
> 
> I believe that if you install texlive from (eg Debian) repos, as
> distinct from texlive-full, that is pretty much what you get, but I
> always install texlive-full myself, so I can't guarantee that.

Thanks, Peter. I've cross-posted to alt.os.linux.slackware, where
a texlive thread has recently been active.
   I'd guess the Slackware team wouldn't be happy using debian repos,
though I can't speak for them. Actually, it seems remarkably easy to
construct a tl-lite for Slackware, just using the existing install-tl
script:
   (a) run install-tl, select components comprising your "lite" version,
       and install that in /usr/share/texlive/ (or /where/ever) directory,
   (b) tarball it for a "texlive series" in the slackware distribution,
   (c) add an /etc/profile.d/texlive.sh script for paths, etc (and
       chmod the tetex scripts so they don't execute)
I can only guess it's the "select components" part that has the
Slackware team stymied. Maybe an additional install-tl option
that lets users select a "very lite" (100MB), "lite" (250MB), etc
option, and then automatically selects an appropriate subset
of tl components. Since that option would be maintained by the
texlive team, maybe tweaking selected component subsets year-to-year,
slackware maintainers wouldn't have to worry about components.

--- additional remarks regarding original (now snipped) post ---
>
> I do remember using both PCTeX (which is indeed still going strong) and
> emTeX in the short period between VAX and Unix when I actually used a
> DOS system. The whole thing fitted on a few floppies, I suspect. I think
> I may still have a copy installed on one of those mid-1990s HardCard?
> 20Mb hard-disk-on-a-card systems that I discovered lurking in the office
> a year or so ago. I stuck it in a Windows PC and the disk was working
> fine and I noticed WordStar 1512, PC-Write, and TeX were on it.
> ///Peter

Yeah, I had PCTeX on a Plus Hardcard 40MB disk, on a dual-floppy
DOS-based PC, in the late 1980's. Times have changed: my very first
programming was on an IBM 1620 in the late 1960's, which had 40K memory,
two 20MB hard disks, executed ~50K instructions/second, and rented
from IBM for ~$10K/month. My current desktop cost ~$1K (so let's
say 1/100 the cost), has almost half a million times the memory,
50,000 times the disk capacity, and a million times the speed (counting
all cores). If you multiply all those factors, it's 2.5x10^18 times
improvement (and that's not even counting ~10^-3 times smaller/lighter
and ~10^3 times more reliable, which would literally bring the factor
up to ~twice Avogadro's number) over, say, 50 years. So that's
~2.33 times/year, pretty much in line with Moore's law. Over that
same time, top car speed has maybe doubled, gas mileage maybe doubled,
etc, so maybe an overall factor of 10 if you want to be generous.
If cars had improved like computers, they'd cost $10, fly to the Moon
in half a minute using a thimbleful of gas, etc. Computers (electronics
in general) have improved faster and more dramatically than anything
in human experience -- faster by more than a factor of a trillion.
It's hard to comprehend or appreciate what we're looking at.
So, yeah, "Thank you, Eberhard Mattes!", ditto Thomas Esser, and all
the people who contributed to that trillion.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

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#26631

On Fri, 08 Apr 2016 23:12:58 +0000, JohnF wrote:
>>> Slackware has stuck with teTeX because tl is too "heavy". While it's
>>> easy enough to run install-tl and manually choose components, it
>>> would be nice to have a maintained install-tl-lite script so that the
>>> Slackware team could easily package tl with their linux distribution.
>>> I'd guess they'd want something in the ~250MB size (that's about what
>>> their teTeX uses).

On my Slackware 13.1 system teTex takes about 150 MB:

fgrep UNCOMPRE /var/log/packages/tetex-3.0-x86_64-8 
UNCOMPRESSED PACKAGE SIZE:     158940K

But what would be the point in replacing teTex with a stripped down 
TeXLive? I think that a full featured TeXLive would be useful as a 
Slackbuild script (searching at Slackbuilds.org you will find such 
scripts pointing to versions of TeXLive which are some months newer than 
their Slackware releases) or maybe even on an extra DVD shipped with 
Slackware.

But trying to strip down TeXLive would probably only end up in a number 
of threads in places like this where people also request feature ABC and 
XYZ from TeXLive which now is missing. I mean, if I understand you right, 
the whole point in replacing teTeX with TeXLive would be because TeXLive 
has features that teTeX is missing. Then why would you want a TeXLive 
with missing features? I am sure that you would be able to pick the most 
important features for you, but there are many different users out there 
and different users have different tastes when it comes to what is 
important.

regards Henrik
-- 
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc351(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

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#26634 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

In alt.os.linux.slackware H.Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Apr 2016 23:12:58 +0000, JohnF wrote:
>>>> Slackware has stuck with teTeX because tl is too "heavy". While it's
>>>> easy enough to run install-tl and manually choose components, it
>>>> would be nice to have a maintained install-tl-lite script so that the
>>>> Slackware team could easily package tl with their linux distribution.
>>>> I'd guess they'd want something in the ~250MB size (that's about what
>>>> their teTeX uses).
> 
> On my Slackware 13.1 system teTex takes about 150 MB:
> fgrep UNCOMPRE /var/log/packages/tetex-3.0-x86_64-8 
> UNCOMPRESSED PACKAGE SIZE:     158940K

du -sc /usr/share/texmf/ shows 250468 on my 14.1x32.
fgrep UNCOMPRE /var/log/packages/tetex-3.0-i486-8       152M
fgrep UNCOMPRE /var/log/packages/tetex-doc-3.0-i486-8    91M

> But what would be the point in replacing teTex with a stripped down 
> TeXLive? I think that a full featured TeXLive would be useful as a 
> Slackbuild script (searching at Slackbuilds.org you will find such 
> scripts pointing to versions of TeXLive which are some months newer than 
> their Slackware releases) or maybe even on an extra DVD shipped with 
> Slackware.
> 
> But trying to strip down TeXLive would probably only end up in a number 
> of threads in places like this where people also request feature ABC and 
> XYZ from TeXLive which now is missing. I mean, if I understand you right, 
> the whole point in replacing teTeX with TeXLive would be because TeXLive 
> has features that teTeX is missing. Then why would you want a TeXLive 
> with missing features? I am sure that you would be able to pick the most 
> important features for you, but there are many different users out there 
> and different users have different tastes when it comes to what is 
> important.  regards Henrik

tl (TeXLive) has way more features/baggage (I wouldn't call it bloat)
than most people need. The foreign language support alone is several GB.
Ditto the astronomical collection of fonts. There's some kind of 80/20,
or even 90/10, rule here -- 10% of tl contains everything 90% of people
ever need. But teTeX maintenance ended in 2006. And some packages
like tikz have been created since then and are very widely used now.
The install-tl script, which is the front-end installation tool
that comes with tl, already lets you pick and choose which components
to install, but you have to know what you're doing. I'm not sure
why there's no automatic subset of components corresponding to
a "tl lite". That's what slackware needs.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

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#26638 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

John Forkosh wrote:
> [...] I'm not sure
> why there's no automatic subset of components corresponding to
> a "tl lite".

Especially considering the fact that there is BasicTeX for OS X:

https://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html

It shouldn't be too difficult to update install-tl.sh to add an option
to just install the packages making up BasicTeX, right? Such an option
would not only benefit Slackware, it may also be good for software which
uses TeX behind the scenes to produce pdf output, such as Pandoc.
(Pandoc actually makes an explicit effort to only use packages that are
installed with BasicTeX.)


-- 
Joost Kremers                                   joostkremers@fastmail.fm
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

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#26641 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

Le 11/04/2016 10:59, Joost Kremers a écrit :
> John Forkosh wrote:
>> [...] I'm not sure
>> why there's no automatic subset of components corresponding to
>> a "tl lite".
>
> Especially considering the fact that there is BasicTeX for OS X:
>
> https://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html
>
> It shouldn't be too difficult to update install-tl.sh to add an option
> to just install the packages making up BasicTeX, right?  Such an option
> would not only benefit Slackware, it may also be good for software which
> uses TeX behind the scenes to produce pdf output, such as Pandoc.
> (Pandoc actually makes an explicit effort to only use packages that are
> installed with BasicTeX.)
>
>


According to the very detailed explanations provided by the
author of BasicTeX :

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/BasicTeX.pdf

such an option seems to already basically exist: it is to use
the "TeX Live small scheme"

Also one has to tell the install script not
to install documentation nor source trees.

And Dick Koch instructs the install script not to build formats,
but later does it manually for some reason sudo fmtutil-sys --all
(perhaps after having configured paths).

The document above explains it all with complete details.

Jean-François

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#26649 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

In alt.os.linux.slackware jfbu <jfREMOVEbu@free.fr> wrote:
> Le 11/04/2016 10:59, Joost Kremers a ?crit :
>> John Forkosh wrote:
>>> [...] I'm not sure why there's no automatic subset
>>> of components corresponding to a "tl lite".
>>
>> Especially considering the fact that there is BasicTeX for OS X:
>>    https://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html
>> It shouldn't be too difficult to update install-tl.sh to add an option
>> to just install the packages making up BasicTeX, right?  Such an option
>> would not only benefit Slackware, it may also be good for software which
>> uses TeX behind the scenes to produce pdf output, such as Pandoc.
>> (Pandoc actually makes an explicit effort to only use packages that are
>> installed with BasicTeX.)
> 
> According to the very detailed explanations provided by the
> author of BasicTeX :
>    http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/BasicTeX.pdf
> such an option seems to already basically exist: it is to use
> the "TeX Live small scheme"
>    Also one has to tell the install script not
> to install documentation nor source trees.
>    And Dick Koch instructs the install script not to build formats,
> but later does it manually for some reason sudo fmtutil-sys --all
> (perhaps after having configured paths).
>    The document above explains it all with complete details.
> Jean-Fran?ois

Thanks for the info, guys; I wasn't aware of BasicTeX.
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I was suggesting
(though I'd probably build some frequently-used-formats).
So it seems pretty clear slackware (and maybe some other
distributions) probably ought to be doing more or less the
same thing. Surely a better idea than 10-year-old teTeX.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

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#26646 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

On Mon, 11 Apr 2016 07:11:05 +0000, John Forkosh wrote:

> In alt.os.linux.slackware H.Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Apr 2016 23:12:58 +0000, JohnF wrote:
>>>>> I'd guess they'd want something in the ~250MB size
>>>>> (that's about what their teTeX uses).
>> 
>> On my Slackware 13.1 system teTex takes about 150 MB:
>> fgrep UNCOMPRE /var/log/packages/tetex-3.0-x86_64-8
>> UNCOMPRESSED PACKAGE SIZE:     158940K

> du -sc /usr/share/texmf/ shows 250468 on my 14.1x32. fgrep UNCOMPRE
> /var/log/packages/tetex-3.0-i486-8       152M fgrep UNCOMPRE
> /var/log/packages/tetex-doc-3.0-i486-8    91M

Yes, you are right, tetex comes in two packages which sums up to about 
250 MB.
 
>> But trying to strip down TeXLive would probably only end up in a number
>> of threads in places like this where people also request feature ABC
>> and XYZ from TeXLive which now is missing. I mean, if I understand you
>> right, the whole point in replacing teTeX with TeXLive would be because
>> TeXLive has features that teTeX is missing. Then why would you want a
>> TeXLive with missing features? I am sure that you would be able to pick
>> the most important features for you, but there are many different users
>> out there and different users have different tastes when it comes to
>> what is important.

> tl (TeXLive) has way more features/baggage (I wouldn't call it bloat)
> than most people need. The foreign language support alone is several GB.

As English is not my native language I might be one of those interested 
in foreign language support. So is probably the rest of the world outside 
the english speaking countries...

> Ditto the astronomical collection of fonts. There's some kind of 80/20,
> or even 90/10, rule here -- 10% of tl contains everything 90% of people
> ever need. But teTeX maintenance ended in 2006. And some packages like
> tikz have been created since then and are very widely used now. The
> install-tl script, which is the front-end installation tool that comes
> with tl, already lets you pick and choose which components to install,
> but you have to know what you're doing. I'm not sure why there's no
> automatic subset of components corresponding to a "tl lite". That's what
> slackware needs.

Yes, if there were a well defined subset where many people agreed that 
"this is what most people need" such a subset might be suitable to 
replace tetex. With such a subset it would also be a need for an easily 
downloadable complement package to convert the initial subset 
installation to a complete tl installation.

Today I would say that tetex works as the initial subset which works for 
most users and texlive is an extra package installable by slackbuilds for 
those few which actually do any work themselves in latex.

But as you say, it is hard for the average user to know exactly which 
packages are needed, that is why a full install is usually recomended. 
This full install recomendation probably applies to Linux distributions 
like Slackware as well as TeX installations like TeXLive.

regards Henrik
-- 
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc351(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

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#26637

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> But trying to strip down TeXLive would probably only end up in a number 
> of threads in places like this where people also request feature ABC and 
> XYZ from TeXLive which now is missing.

They could simply use tlmgr (TeXLive Manager) to install those packages.

> I mean, if I understand you right, 
> the whole point in replacing teTeX with TeXLive would be because TeXLive 
> has features that teTeX is missing.

Not features. Updates. Those updates might be new features, yes, but
they don't have to be. They may simply be improved functionality and bug
fixes. They may also include changes that break backward compatibility.
Which is another reason (apart from new features) why not all modern
LaTeX documents will compile with teTeX.

> Then why would you want a TeXLive 
> with missing features?

Because there are many features that most people don't need.

> I am sure that you would be able to pick the most 
> important features for you, but there are many different users out there 
> and different users have different tastes when it comes to what is 
> important.

I think a reasonable subset can be created that will satisfy most
people's needs. BasicTeX seems to fit the bill.


-- 
Joost Kremers                                   joostkremers@fastmail.fm
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

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#26647

On Mon, 11 Apr 2016 08:54:42 +0000, Joost Kremers wrote:
> They could simply use tlmgr (TeXLive Manager) to install those packages.

Yes, assuming that the Slackware machine has a good connection to the 
internet. There are many machines out there in the world with bad 
internet connections, having to pay for every downloaded MegaByte. There 
are even Slackware machines with no internet connection at all... The 
owner of those machines really appreciate that it is possible to buy DVDs 
with Slackware.

regards Henrik
-- 
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc351(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

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#26658 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

There is an effort to do it for Slackware:

See the details at:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/call-for-testers-texlive-custom-4175574254/

Franzen has created slackware package for texlive:
http://slackware.schoepfer.info/slackbuilds/texlive/


Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2016 08:54:42 +0000, Joost Kremers wrote:
>> They could simply use tlmgr (TeXLive Manager) to install those packages.
>
> Yes, assuming that the Slackware machine has a good connection to the
> internet. There are many machines out there in the world with bad
> internet connections, having to pay for every downloaded MegaByte. There
> are even Slackware machines with no internet connection at all... The
> owner of those machines really appreciate that it is possible to buy DVDs
> with Slackware.
>
> regards Henrik
>

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#26661 — Re: TeXLive on Slackware

On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 11:13:19 -0700, Qun-Ying wrote:

> There is an effort to do it for Slackware:
> 
> See the details at:
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/call-for-testers-
texlive-custom-4175574254/

In post #2 in that thread from 2012 rworkman says "I've offered ownership 
of the SBo texlive build to Franzen if he wants it."

However, it seems as if Franzen did not accept that offer, 
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.0/office/texlive/?search=texlive
and
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.1/office/texlive/?search=texlive
are still both maintained by Robby Workman.
 
> Franzen has created slackware package for texlive:
> http://slackware.schoepfer.info/slackbuilds/texlive/

Still Franzen seems to have a newer version of texlive in a less official 
place than slackbuilds.org.

regards Henrik
-- 
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc351(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

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