[tex-live] "why is tex live so big"

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2012-10-22 at 19:03:52 +0200, Martin Schröder wrote:

 > 2012/10/22 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
 > > size can only be reduced by not installing the documentation. All
 > > binaries, scripts, style files, fonts etc are small, only the
 > 
 > <cough>cmsuper</cough>

Sure, cmsuper is huge, but AFAIK it contains fonts not supported by
Latin Modern.  I've seen many documents using cmsuper.  I'm not sure
whether this is always intended, maybe they are loaded by some macro
packages.  However, I fear that if cmsuper is removed, we will be
bothered by many PDF files containing bitmap fonts instead.

 
 > > du -k --max-depth=1 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/|sort -rn
 > 2958292 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/
 > 1326012 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/doc
 > 1117276 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/fonts
 > 238652  /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/source
 > 216424  /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex
 > 
 > Fonts are _not_ small.

I suppose you mean "the fonts tree isn't small".

Actually, fonts are not large.  But TeX Live provides many of them.
Since I'm working on a multi-platform installation, I'm glad that TL
provides so many fonts.  System fonts are useless in my environment.

 > KerTeX tries to be a small TeX distribution.

It claims to be small.  It provides cmsuper as well. <cough> :)

A small distribution is always based on assumptions about what users
need.  And these assumptions are almost always wrong.  If people like
KerTeX, they will ask to add this or that package and finally KerTeX
will either die or be as large as TeX Live.  It's wasted time, the
proper way to create a small TeX distribution is to provide a TeX Live
installation scheme.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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