Which latex should I install

Roland Smith rsmith at xs4all.nl
Fri Jun 26 16:40:47 UTC 2009


On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 03:27:51PM +0100, Anton Shterenlikht wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 10:21:37AM -0400, Daniel Underwood wrote:
> > > Is there a FBSD port of TeXLive?
> > 
> > No, but it's not necessary.  Just go here
> > <http://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire.html> and download the DVD image.
> 
> well.. I'll wait for some kind sole to put a texlive port together.
> Tetex port has been enough for me for some years now.

The thing is that teTeX hasn't been updated in years. It has in fact
been deprecated in favor of TeXLive. This is not a big problem with the
basic TeX engine, because that doesn't change that much. But pdfTeX (a
TeX that generates PDF output instead of DVI) has been evolving
rapidly. And you'll miss out on several years of updates of the macro
packages (like LaTeX and ConTeXt).

Another consideration is that TeXLive contains a much larger choice of
additional packages than teTeX.

So I would advise you to install TeXLive. The latest DVD comes with
FreeBSD binaries.

Look at the mailing list archives for threads called "LaTeX oder teTeX"
in October 2007, and "Installing latest version of LaTeX" in June
2009. In those threads I've posted some instructions on how to get
TeXLive to work. Installation is pretty easy, but you have to change
login.conf and manpath.conf to use the binaries and manpages. Normally
TeXLive keeps everything under its own tree (/usr/local/texlive), so it
won't mess up the trees /usr/local/{bin,share,...}. Do _not_ tell the
installer to put symbolic links in /usr/local/bin! That way removing
TeXLive is as easy as removing /usr/local/texlive.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20090626/77c1a20e/attachment.pgp


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list