[tex-live] Installing TeX Live 2008 from the net : a review of steps taken and problems encoountered.

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Philip, 

thanks for your comments ...

On Do, 07 Aug 2008, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> 10) First two links are OK, next four are broken :
> 	
> 	texmf-doc/doc/english/ hierarchy, in both html and pdf formats.
> 	Translations to other languages are also available under 
> 	texmf-doc/doc/*.

known, we will change the wording.

> 11) Next four links are OK, but it is more
> than a little disingenuous to speak of "gv",
> "xpdf" and "Sumatra PDF" as being "free
> alternatives to Acrobat" when the Adobe Acrobat
> [...]

I leave that to the documenation writers ...

> 13) I suggest changing the wording concerning the "install-tl" script
>     as follows :

Same with that.

> 14) To avoid the "disappearing CMD window" phenomenon,
>     I think we should either adopt the %ComSpec" /K approach,
>     or else make it plain that the "install-tl.bat" file
>     must be launched from within a CMD window.

Hmm, Siep, can you please comment on that? And/or change or whatever you
think is best.

>     that the GUI window is not automatically
>     given focus : this could easily confuse a
>     naive user.

No idea. that is probably Tk problem which cannot be solved now since
including a new Tk module will probably break about 100+ other things.

> 16) Using the GUI interface, the lack of a browse
>     feature is very noticeable on attempting to
>     modify TEXDIR.

Ok. But as we said already, there is the problem with the addition 2008
directory we would like to have ...

> 17) The prompt reads "Enter path for TEXDIR
> 	(Use ~ for HOME/USERPROFILE).  As
>     mentioned in an earlier message, the use

You promised (well, more or less ;-))) to send us a better text!

> 18) Using click-at-end, drag to beginning, overtype
>    (a fairly standard way in Windows of replacing
>     an existing entry with typed input), the first
>     attempt succeeded but the second resulted in
>     the overtype being itself highlit and therefore
>     deleted on the next character.  Attempting to
>     use the cancel key had no perceivable effect,
>     but after further interaction with the dialogue
>     box the CMD window reported
> 
> >Tk::Error: Can't locate object method "cancel" via package 
> >"Tk::After::Cancelled

Strange. I never managed that. But probably I ...

>    drag is fast and extensive; if it is slow and

... never was fast and extensive enough. Again, Tk problem, not that we
can do much here without upgrading Tk.

> 19) Having finally coerced TEXDIR to read "O:\TeX\Live\2008",
>     all following buttons shew the paths with mixed delimiters
>    (e.g., TEXMFLOCAL = "O:\TeX\Live\2008/texmf-local".  If
>     I then change TEXDIR to read "O:/TeX/Live/2008", a very
>     significant change occurs : TEXMFLOCAL now reads
>    "O:/TeX/Live/2008/texmf-local" (note that the 2008
>     has disappeared) : this would seem to suggest that

... there is a "2008" here. But still you are right, that should be
streamlined. Thanks.

> 20) TEXMFHOME reads "~/texmf"; as discussed above, this
>     won't be meaningful to a Windows user, and the

Please send/suggest better wording

> Enough for tonight : I now have to collect
> Khanh from the station ...

And I have to go to bed.

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>        Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining at debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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