mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Bob Lounsbury <address@hidden>]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:00 AM, Andrea Gamba <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

I have been reading the posts about texmacs 1.0.7 in Ubuntu. I have tried to
install 1.0.7 on a cleanly installed Intrepid i386 box, but with lot of
problems.

I have tried with three different methods:

1) downloading debs from Debian experimental. The debs get installed but the
program crashes.

2) the script kindly provided by Paul Zarucki. I get a compilation error in the
end.

3) transforming the rpm available on the texmacs site with alien. It works
(it's the way I am happily using texmacs 1.0.7) but texmacs mime type is not
recognized (no corresponding icons on the desktop, no opening the program by
clicking on the icons). Also, I had to fix by hands the interfaces to several
mathematical packages. These are minor problems but annoying ones. I know how
to solve them by hands (I posted about it), I think therefore that it should
not be difficult to solve them at the level of the deb file (but I am not able
to do it myself.)

I hoped that there would be a deb package of 1.0.7 for Ubuntu 9.04, which will
be out in the end of April, but it seems that they are still at 1.0.6. I
noticed that 1.0.7 fixed a lot of bugs, so it's a pity it will not available in
the next Ubuntu realease. If there would be a deb available, I would be happy
to test it to check the working of interfaces to several mathematical packages.


So my question is: will there be a deb package for Ubuntu 9.04 before its
release? or is it possible that there would be one available in backports? or
at least one for Ubuntu 9.10?

Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions around, in an ideal world a deb
to the last texmacs version should be available and working out of the box
together with good gnome integration (recognizing mime types) and integration
with mathematical packages (sessions working out of the box, no sh-bash
problems etc.)

During the years I have been using texmacs more and more and I am more or less
able to fix problems. However new users may be scared away by a buggy interface
or difficulties in the installation. This hampers the wider adoption of an
outstanding program while a small effort would allow to solve these
comparatively minor problems.

Andrea

I've been following this thread albeit with a little confusion, and then it hit me. This is the problem with Ubuntu. There is just to much "hand holding" and now people are expecting that Ubuntu should do everything for them and anything they desire. Ubuntu provides a stable texmacs version, if you want the very latest version it's not Ubuntu's responsiblity to provide that the second it is available. Linux is not Windows, there will not always be the very latest program available for you to double-click and install, there is a standard version provided with the release so if you want the latest version it will require some work. The great thing about Debian derivatives is that this is rather trivial. If I wanted the latest version of texmacs I would:

1) Download the latest source and extract it into ~/.installed_programs/TeXmacs-1.0.7.1
2) Open a terminal and cd to ~/.installed_programs/TeXmacs-1.0.7.1
3) Run 'sudo apt-get build-dep texmacs'
4) Run './configure && make && sudo make install'

Done. Nine times out of ten that's all that's needed to have the latest version installed.

/Bob