in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Sat, 3/31/12, Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: users at lists.fedoraproject.org
> Date: Saturday, March 31, 2012, 8:33 AM
> You can have texlive 2011 if you
> like:
> 
> [texlive]
> name=TeX Live
> baseurl=http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/2011/packages.fc16/
> enabled=1
> metadata_expire=1d
> gpgcheck=0
> 
> 
> 
> -- 

I know that, but it* is unofficial :(, it is crippled*, it is <= official TeXLive :(, It will be because of patents* :(, files that are under licenses[that are not approved by Fedora/or the FSF]* :(  The reasons are endless :(  I used it several times, and it works for small things like KerTeX does, but for books, big projects it* needs more to get things done^{1}.  I don't know why and they%[packagers and maintainers] make up their minds and say ok, you will have texlive-core, or texlive-minimum(which satisfy the Fedora and/or FSF requirements).  The rest of the stuff^[which you may need get it from somewhere else] much like the rest of the non-free stuff and illegal which is in Fedora forbidden!  

{*} non-free globs are removed like the lib-xine- packages from Fedora that remove the dvd playing capabilities forcing users to look in RPM fusion to get the non-free* parts
{1} things like style files, and packages that are restricted and not freely releaseable :(

KerTeX is small, kerTeX has the functionality and is released under a BSD like License see:

http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/licence_kerTeX_T.txt

At first I did not see things that are normally used, i.e, pdflatex, pdftex, dvipdfm, ..., etc.  But after trying it out and using it, I really like it.  It satisfies the original intentions of Donald E. Knuth, to keep TeX Free for the world to use and enjoy :)

I like TeX/LaTeX and have used it to typeset articles for a professor I had in college.  I just typed the articles, but I learned using it and appreciate its robustness and quality.  The TeX was a gift from Donald E. Knuth to the world and I have used several distros like TeTeX, TeXLive and now KerTeX.  

I don't mean to put anyone down, but so much time is lost looking at these things that it puts many \TeX{}Nicians and \LaTeX{} users looking to the real thing**texlive dvd** to get things done and not help out Fedora/Red Hat by using the repo, by testing, suggesting and helping :(  

I am being sincere and truthful and like I say I don't mean to put down the efforts of the folks doing this work, but it* sadly takes too long, tracking down individials who made style files and ask them for permission to distribute their style files.  If they don't want for those files to be distributed, why did they made them available in the first place?
Why complicate things for packagers and maintainers that want to give the end users the best latexing/texing experience for their favorite distro(s)?
This is something that I have seen debated and in the end nobody wins :(

Regards,


Antonio