[tex-live] How about auto-download of classes/styles etc. ?

[Alex Hamann]

On 13.10.2008, at 01:41, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> Zdenek Wagner writes:
>> 2008/10/12 Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com>:
>>> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Norbert Preining  
>>> <preining at logic.at> wrote:
>>>> On So, 12 Okt 2008, Edd Barrett wrote:
>>>>>
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>
>
> There is no way to make everyone happy anyway.
>
> TeX Live offers the concept of 'collections' and 'schemes' for years.
> Even if disk space matters, it's easy enough to customize the
> installation conveniently.  Isn't it sufficient?  I don't recognise
> the value of downloading packages on-the-fly.  It's usually more
> anoying then helpful.
>
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>

I fully agree here.  I tend to use the same packages over and over  
again. At the same time HD space is limited for me. I therefore  
switched to MacTeX2008 Basic, a slim TeXLive2008-based distribution.  
I had to add a few packages but that really was not a big deal. A on- 
the-fly solution would not have provided significant advantage to me.  
I am in social sciences and tend to use a limited set of packages.  
Are people in other disciplines more reliant on a very large number  
of packages for one time use only? Only in this latter case an on-the- 
fly solution would make sense in my understanding.

Alex