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#1 2007-04-11 14:31:53

vfork_0x00f
Member
Registered: 2006-08-28
Posts: 14

replace TeTex package by TeX Live

As of May 2006, TeTeX has been abandoned upstream (see http://www.tug.org/tetex). Another project, called TeX Live, which uses most of the scripts developed for teTeX, is its successor. I would suggest to replace TeTex packages in arch by Tex Live.

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#2 2007-04-11 18:17:55

dw
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2006-11-25
Posts: 160

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

+1

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#3 2007-04-11 19:14:49

mucknert
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From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

Please no +1 posts. Write at least a sentence or suggest alternatives.
I for myself, would like to see TeX Live. I used it under Mac OS X and the output beats that of tetex by far. I really wonder why tetex got so popular in the first place but that is another question.


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#4 2007-04-11 19:21:14

patroclo7
Member
From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY
Registered: 2006-01-11
Posts: 915

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

I do not know exactly why, but I remember vaguely that it is not very easy to package texlive; debian has has difficulties in doing that. Anyway I hope that this can be done soon, thanks to whom is able to cope with this task.


Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

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#5 2007-04-11 22:18:46

elasticdog
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From: Washington, USA
Registered: 2005-05-02
Posts: 995
Website

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

IIRC this has already been discussed a long time ago (either here or on the mailing list), and it's no small undertaking, but they are working on it.

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#6 2007-04-12 01:09:01

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

mucknert wrote:

I used it under Mac OS X and the output beats that of tetex by far.

Now this I don't understand - the output (dvi or pdf) should be the SAME, regardless of tex compiler used. The tex specifications were freezed by Knuth looong time ago. Pdftex evolves a little, but producing a different output is against the whole tex philosophy.

Now the speed of the compiler - that's a different matter. Although, with today's computers, I doubt there is a noticeable difference.

As far as I remember, when I tried to use texlive, it was a huge beast compared to miktex (which is a more-less an analogue of tetex for windows).

Anyway, I would not like to see tetex replaced by texlive, since tex does not evolve in a substantial manner anymore (and did not for quite a while). Pdftex does evolve a bit, but for me that's not enough to install every new version they come up with. Doing normal texing, latexing a pdftexing, everybody I know is well off even using few years old versions (and all my colleagues write math papers). What does evolve are various macro packages, which are installed separately anyway.

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#7 2007-04-12 04:27:09

mucknert
Member
From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

bender02 wrote:

Now this I don't understand - the output (dvi or pdf) should be the SAME, regardless of tex compiler used. The tex specifications were freezed by Knuth looong time ago. Pdftex evolves a little, but producing a different output is against the whole tex philosophy.

Sorry, I should have been more precise. They both layout the same way, so the actual outcome is identical from a Typesetters point of view. But the quality of the actual output varies in the way, that graphics (with \includegraphics) are cleaner when set with TeX Live whereas the graphics in documents produced by teTeX feature artifacts and are subject to aliasing.


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#8 2007-04-12 04:57:23

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

That still seems a bit strange to me. There should be no such difference in the output, since if I understand this tex/pdftex business correctly, the actual binaries are based on the same sources (web2c implementation of tex itself, and Han The Thanh's pdftex sources). The main differences between texlive and tetex is (I think) are in the structure of the texmf tree (directory layout).

To me it looks like different default configuration of various stuff around tex that could make this kind of difference - for example, I recall having to manually enable the use of postscript fonts (in the .dvi -> .ps or .pdf phase) in tetex, since it was using bitmap fonts by default - but this was a while ago. And also I might be mistaken.

I think that from the users' point of view, the switch from tetex to texlive should be without substantial problems (if the packaging of texlive is done correctly, which seems to be a hell load of work). Mainly because people generally use "vanilla" tex (ie they don't set up any funky stuff in the tex configuration), so the only thing that really matters is that if (pdf)tex binary is in the path and that it can find all the macros. So I wouldn't really mind the switch, except I see it as unnecesary at present. No great new features in texlive, no deadly bugs in tetex, so why all the work? (If we wait, we can learn on other distro's mistakes; or adopt their packaging approach if it's good wink

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#9 2007-04-12 09:48:09

[vEX]
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-23
Posts: 450

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

mucknert wrote:

Sorry, I should have been more precise. They both layout the same way, so the actual outcome is identical from a Typesetters point of view. But the quality of the actual output varies in the way, that graphics (with \includegraphics) are cleaner when set with TeX Live whereas the graphics in documents produced by teTeX feature artifacts and are subject to aliasing.

Think you could provide some small sample from both teTex and TeX Live?


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#10 2007-04-12 10:06:22

mucknert
Member
From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

texcomparemb8.th.png

You can see the difference. It is even worse for vertical lines.


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#11 2007-04-12 11:34:32

[vEX]
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-23
Posts: 450

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

Damn, that's quite a difference! Even the color of the circles are brighter with TeX Live.
Are those rendered with pdflatex or the dvips way? And what format are the pictures?


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#12 2007-04-12 11:50:24

mucknert
Member
From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

Told you! wink
The images are in PNG. The documents have been rendered directly with pdflatex.


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#13 2007-04-12 16:22:28

dw
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2006-11-25
Posts: 160

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

mucknert wrote:

Please no +1 posts. Write at least a sentence or suggest alternatives.

sorry about that. but since i totally agree with the original poster vfork_0x00f, i thought a +1 backup post would be enough. in future, i'll post a bit more....

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#14 2007-04-12 19:19:16

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

mucknert: wow, that's bad news for my ideal tex world wink This phenomenon looks interesting to me, would it be possible that you hang on the web (or send me) the pdf-files, and possibly also the sources for that example of yours, please?

If it's not a configuration issue, but really something with compilers themselves, then I'm all in for texlive.

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#15 2007-04-12 20:20:19

mucknert
Member
From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

bender02: Sorry, no can do. That is from my thesis which is, at the moment, still classified. wink You could reproduce it yourself easily, though. Just export a Vector-Graphic (e.g. from Inkscape) to PNG and put it into the TeX-File. That's how I did it.


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#16 2007-04-12 20:28:17

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

mucknert: Oh, the trouble is that I don't have texlive installed anywhere (using arch), so hard for me to try. How about just the first page then? (I wanted to look at the pdf to see where is the difference coming from, and what tex code produced it.)

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#17 2007-04-13 09:13:27

mucknert
Member
From: Berlin // Germany
Registered: 2006-06-27
Posts: 510

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

bender02: Alright, I have prepared a TeX-File plus PDFs for you. You can find it under http://craphouse.ath.cx/~christian/tex_compare.tar.bz2


Todays mistakes are tomorrows catastrophes.

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#18 2007-04-13 16:46:03

vfork_0x00f
Member
Registered: 2006-08-28
Posts: 14

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

I got a result similar to mucknert when embeding a PNG image in a document and comparing both implementation of TeX. Another reason to change for TeX Live ! cool

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#19 2007-04-13 18:17:52

[vEX]
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-23
Posts: 450

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

Hrm.. TeX Live seems to only be available as a live cd, still that's nice since I'm as well working on my master thesis and would like the end PDF look really nice. Guess I'll download it and kick it up in QEMU and see how it fares.


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#20 2007-04-13 18:58:21

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

[vEX]: it's possible to install texlive to the hard drive, at least in windows (and I guess on macs too), there should be an installer on the CD.

mucknert: Thanks a lot for the files! The outcome is that texlive uses newer pdftex-1.30.4, and tetex only pdftex-1.21a. And indeed there is a considerable improvement in newer pdftexes (actually the newest is 1.40.3 http://sarovar.org/projects/pdftex/) as far as including pictures goes.

So yes - tetex is dead, long live texlive!

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#21 2007-04-13 21:07:58

[vEX]
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-23
Posts: 450

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

Ah, so then the quest is too make a PKGBUILD for the newer pdftex and overwrite the teTeX provided one (while waiting for TeX Live to be part of Arch Linux). I wonder though if pacman lets you do that.

Or.. hmm.. I think that the teTeX PKGBUILD could be modified to download the newest pdfTeX and overwrite the old src and then be built as normal. I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

EDIT: Okay, so I managed to break the teTeX build by taking a chance at with files actually need to be copied, obviously it's more advanced than that. Just building the latest pdfTeX is plain easy though, not sure what will happen if you overwrite the files used by (and "owned") teTeX.

I'll post the files incase anyone wants to try, I won't take any responsibility though, haven't tried it myself, but a guess is that if it messes teTeX up you should recover by 'pacman -S tetex' and say yes when it tells you the latest version is already installed. That's just a guess though. I've not tried building it on i686, but I don't think it should complain so I put it in there as well.

PKGBUILD:

pkgname=pdftex
pkgver=1.40.3
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Create PDF-files from TeX-files"
arch=(i686 x86_64)
url="http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/"
license=('GPL')
depends=('glibc')
install=pdftex.install
source=(http://sarovar.org/download.php/1160/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('3e5ce0ff804e0420908b89ae44c69532')

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
    ./build.sh

    # Overwrite old files
    install -D $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/build/texk/web2c/pdfetex $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/pdfetex
    install -D $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/build/texk/web2c/pdftex $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/pdftex
    install -D -m 644 $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/build/texk/web2c/pdftex.pool $startdir/pkg/usr/share/texmf/web2c/pdftex.pool
    install -D $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/build/texk/web2c/pdftosrc $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/pdftosrc
    install -D $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/build/texk/web2c/ttf2afm $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/ttf2afm
}

pdftex.install:

# arg 1:  the new package version
pre_install() {
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
post_install() {
    echo "Regenerating TeX formats"
    fmtutil --refresh
    /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
pre_upgrade() {
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
post_upgrade() {
    post_install $1
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
pre_remove() {
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
post_remove() {
  /bin/true
}

op=$1
shift
$op $*

Last edited by [vEX] (2007-04-13 21:39:05)


PC: Antec P182B | Asus P8Z77-V PRO | Intel i5 3570k | 16GB DDR3 | GeForce 450GTS | 4TB HDD | Pioneer BDR-207D | Asus Xonar DX | Altec Lansing CS21 | Eizo EV2736W-BK | Arch Linux x86_64
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#22 2007-04-14 19:25:05

vfork_0x00f
Member
Registered: 2006-08-28
Posts: 14

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

In Debian, the TeTeX package was replaced by TexLive in the unstable repository. Tetex-bin and tetex-extra packages are now only transitional package to smoth upgrade to TexLive for users that already have TeTex. Maybe it could be a good idea to follow a similar upgrade path for ArchLinux.

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#23 2007-04-27 02:40:28

LordRaiden
Member
Registered: 2007-03-12
Posts: 16

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

I also support the use of texlive. Personally, I would like to see miktex-tools (in AUR) also be incorporated some how since the macros there are substantially updated, but that is another matter entirely.

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#24 2007-04-27 11:29:23

[vEX]
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-23
Posts: 450

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

I tried downloading the live DVD (and the CD as well), but QEMU refuses to run either, it just tells me it can't find any device too boot from. Anyone managed to get it to work?


PC: Antec P182B | Asus P8Z77-V PRO | Intel i5 3570k | 16GB DDR3 | GeForce 450GTS | 4TB HDD | Pioneer BDR-207D | Asus Xonar DX | Altec Lansing CS21 | Eizo EV2736W-BK | Arch Linux x86_64
HTPC: Antec NSK2480 | ASUS M3A78-EM (AMD 780G) | AMD Athlon X3 425 | 8GB DDR2 | GeForce G210 | 2TB HDD | Arch Linux x86_64
Server: Raspberry Pi (model B) | 512MB RAM | 750GB HDD | Arch Linux ARM

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#25 2007-04-27 14:56:10

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: replace TeTex package by TeX Live

vEX: TeXlive is not supposed to boot from that cd/dvd, "live" just means that you should be able to run tex from it, without having to install it to a harddrive. I apologize if I'm saying something obvious to you, but I got the impression from your post that you're trying to boot from it.

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