in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Sat, 3/31/12, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:

> From: Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu>
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: users at lists.fedoraproject.org
> Date: Saturday, March 31, 2012, 11:53 AM
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> 
> > I know that, but it* is unofficial :(, it is crippled*,
> it is <= official
> > TeXLive :(, It will be because of patents*
> 
> You continue to make the assertion that fedora's (official
> or unofficial) 
> texlive is crippled, particularly due to patents.  
> 
> Can you provide details or evidence of that?

Ok, here you go.  With any Fedora version or texlive that is Fedora derived, try compiling:

Download: 
http://www.mecmath.net/trig/trigbook-1.1-src.tar.gz
Extract it and try to run
$./trigbook.sh
see how far you get?  You will need to get picins.sty, at least.  With official TeXLive from DVD, just picins.sty is needed.  With Fedora's texlive?, I have no idea :(  

Try the next one:
http://mecmath.net/calc3book-1.0-src.tar.gz

Even the official TeXLive from DVD does not do this one, even that it has what Fedora has removed, it needs some metapost for 3d style files :(, 

http://www-math.univ-poitiers.fr/~phan/m3Dplain.html

This book also asks for picins.sty so If you did the first one, it can be used for the second one.  

There are more, you can see a differential equations book and a real analysis book also:

http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/

Source is here:
http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/diffyqs.tar.gz

I create build script:
/*********** build script **************/

#!/bin/sh

pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode diffyqs.tex
pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode diffyqs.tex
makeindex diffyqs
pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode diffyqs.tex

/*********** end build script **************/

run it, see how far you go.  

Try also the real analysis book:

http://www.jirka.org/ra/realanal.tar.gz

with similar build script.  Copy the first build script to the new extracted directory and run
$ sed -i 's|diffyqs.tex|realanal.tex|g' name-of-buildscriptused

and run it.  See how far you go.

There are more examples, but one that is an excellent one is lshort.  Try to build it, and see how far you get.

http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort-5.01.src.tar.gz

If it is done without hunting down a great deal of *.sty files, and packages, then I rest my case and won't beat up a dead horse.  Otherwise, this is what I have been trying to let folks know about the state of TeX on Fedora.  And Fedora stands for newer packages, newer technologies, and ..., with TeX and texlive2007 (official* again not the repo), tex and latex users[on fedora without repo] are shortchanged with the not so latest technologies that the tex/latex world has to offer :(  

Also for evidence as to Fedora was to include TeXLive 20XY in Fedora 1?, see this 

\begin{quote}
New version texlive-2008 (to be in f12):
* one single texlive package generating 3944 subpackages / 1065 MiB
* spec file automagically generated from upstream metadata with
  http://people.redhat.com/jnovy/files/tl2008/t...
* upstream collections/packages are separate source tarballs
  (one could update one small source tarball if a particular style
  needs update and doesn't need to repack the whole single tarball or
  patch it)
* new texlive is maximally scalable depending on which features are
  needed:
  - basic installation needs only 12 MiB of packages to be downloaded!
  - essential features such as pdflatex is supported in this basic
    scheme
* it is a full (not truncated or otherwise crippled) version of TeX
  Live
\end{quote}

http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/o4zV8OpE1ZTzzpopAuqz

Was texlive 2008 ever in Fedora 12?
Not even in Fedora 16 :(

This is what I mean :(  
I will not question what they(developers/packagers) are trying to do, but it is not working as many would have liked it for to.  

> 
> In particular, I'd followed up twice to point out that the
> only items 
> removed are due to incompatible *licensing*.  

Exactly!  I understand this, and this does break some things in some cases.  The rules are too stringent!  And they prevent progress from being made :(  Simple as that.  

> 
> -- rex
> 
> -- 

Regards,


Antonio