TeX Hour: Thu 27 May: Understand + refactor TeX Live: more flexible + agile

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2021-05-27 at 14:13:23 +0100, Jonathan Fine wrote:

 > Here's some stats on disk usage on the TeX Collection DVD, from 2010 to
 > 2020. But first some observations. I'll be digging deeper into this in the
 > TeX Hour tonight (6:30 to 7:30 UK time).
 >
 > TEXLIVE
 > 3897806 /data/TEXCOL2020/texlive
 >
 > PROTEXT
 > 1046204 /data/TEXCOL2020/protext
 >
 > MACTEX
 > 455479 /data/TEXCOL2020/mactex

Hello Jonathan,
thanks for the survey.

As you can see, MacTeX is significantly smaller than TeX Live.  The
reason is that MacTeX actually installs TeX Live and adds additional
programs which are usably not present on a Mac.

ProTeXt is a wrapper to MiKTeX supposed to make installation easier.

I don't know why the sizes of MiKTeX and TeX Live are so different.
They [almost] provide the same things.

But what I absolutely don't understand is why Christian Schenk, the
author of MiKTeX, doesn't simply "steal" platform independent packages
from TeX Live.  That would save space on the DVD.  But most important,
it would save *him* a lot of time.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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