Hi Frank, A ConTeXt's package for debian will be great ! Frank Küster a écrit :
Hi everybody,
this mail has a double purpose. At the end, there's a call for testers of a new (planned) Debian ConTeXt package that would be updated more frequently than now (at least in unstable and testing), where ConTeXt is tied to teTeX's or TeXlive's release cycles. But first, I'd like to talk about
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Debian_installation
Are some of the people around who wrote this? I found some information in it misleading and in part just wrong (this has already been pointed out two weaks ago by "plink"), and have started to edit the page to change the parts that give us, the Debian TeX maintaines, most headache. But in the lower part, "Steps to finish a first context upgrade", I felt lost. If these steps are really needed, then there's something seriously wrong in Debian's (and probably upstream's) packaging of ConTeXt. Therefore I didn't just change the text to reflect how I think it should work. Instead, we should try to figure out together whether it in fact does not work as it should, and then fix the Debian packages (hopefully still possible for etch).
From my pov, ConTeXt is really great because of the reactivity of the devs. As a consequence, new astonishing features are often added... but
My contributions was to copy "Install a Metapost update" and "Install a pdfTeX update" from tetex 3.0 Install to Debian Install... there is a price: update often to the latest realease + install the latest metapost and the latest pdfTeX (moreover, here I need the latest beta of pdfTeX). IMHO, it will be nice if the deb provides debian's specifics + interactiv cont-tmf.zip download + install according debian specifics... but there will be dependencies problems... Maybe a full standalone context is the solution (with metapost, pdfTeX and all the binaries we need coexisting with the tetex's one) ? Dunno... Last point, it could be nice to have beta packages for ConTeXt an m-bib (separated)...
So the specific question I have are:
- Is it intended that context formats end up in $TEXMF/web2c/pdfetex/? If yes, why is that so? If not, we should rather find out why it happens and fix it.
It's the way ConTeXt does... ConTeXt's gurus have surely good reasons so I let them answer...
- Why does it make a difference if the formats are created by fmtutil instead of texexec (Except for the output directory)? Should the upstream packaging be changed so that fmtutil is never used, but texexec, or should fmtutil be fixed to produce the same as texexec?
idem
Finally, here comes Norbert Preining's Call for Testers:
Dear all!
We = Debian TeX maintainers searching for users of the Debian Operating Systems which are also using ConTeXt.
Currently Debian etch (testing) and sid (unstable) contains packages for TeX live 2005. But this contains a bit old ConTeXt version, so users are asking us to update ConTeXt.
We have prepared a updated ConTeXt package for Debian, based on the latest released version (2006.08.08), and would ask you to help use testing, as we are not experienced in ConTeXt type settings. I checked some simple documents from the ConTeXt Garden, and they worked, but more detailed testing would be nice.
If you have interest, please contact us at debian-tex-maint@lists.debian.org or, if you have a bit experience, you can straight away add deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ context/ to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and install context. After this, please tell us our experiences/failures/suggestions.
Thanks a lot and all the best
OK, thanks, I'll do it as soon as I have a little more time (after my PhD defense... ;) )
Regards, Frank
Renaud