in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution

[Antonio Olivares]

Dear folks,

This is an FYI, there is a new lightweight simple TeX/LaTeX distrubution called KerTeX.

http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html

It is lightweight, requires few things like bison, flex, ed, lftp, all of which are available in Fedora.  It does not have pdflatex, pdftex, dvipdfm, xdvi,  but many packages can be written for the system.  It is smaller than old TeTeX but it is maintained.  Since Fedora still uses texlive2007 on fedora[except the ones using texlive-repos by J Novy

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TeXLive ]

The packaging and patents are issues that hold TeXLive in Fedora back.  KerTEX is BSD licensed and has no such issues.  It is designed to be installed through a script ./get_mk_install, but it could be made into a package with some work.  Users interested please download it and try it out.  It is a small texing/latexing system that uses RISK framework.

Please test it out if you can, and maybe if the interest is there someone can try to package it and make it work independently even if texlive is installed.

NOTES:
User texifies, latexifies file, tex filename.tex, latex filename.tex, then runs
$ dvips -o filename.dvi filename.ps
or
$ dvips -t letter filename.dvi > filename.ps
then can convert to pdf using ps2pdf with ghostcript installed
$ ps2pdf filename.ps

For big projects and books, still the real TeXLive(from DVD) is the one for the job because the other one will be stopping somewhere because of a certain reason?  Yes and TeXLive is very big [making it difficult to package and patents, nonfree stuff*, etc], so users that want a small portable tex/latex system [without such problems] can use kertex.

If installing kertex, program will look for libl.a, or libfl.a and will stop in case it does not find it, if flex is installed a link may do the job.

Regards,

Antonio

[Andras Simon]

2012/3/14, Antonio Olivares :
> NOTES:
> User texifies, latexifies file, tex filename.tex, latex filename.tex, then
> runs
> $ dvips -o filename.dvi filename.ps

You probably meant

dvips -o filename.ps filename.dvi
> or
> $ dvips -t letter filename.dvi > filename.ps
> then can convert to pdf using ps2pdf with ghostcript installed
> $ ps2pdf filename.ps

ps2pdf filename.ps filename.pdf

Andras

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Wed, 3/14/12, Andras Simon  wrote:
> From: Andras Simon 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: "Community support for Fedora users" 
> Date: Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 11:42 AM
> 2012/3/14, Antonio Olivares :
> > NOTES:
> > User texifies, latexifies file, tex filename.tex, latex
>
> filename.tex, then
> > runs
> > $ dvips -o filename.dvi filename.ps
>
> You probably meant
>
> dvips -o filename.ps filename.dvi

Yes, I got overyly excited about KerTEX, that I made these mistakes :(
> > or
> > $ dvips -t letter filename.dvi > filename.ps
> > then can convert to pdf using ps2pdf with ghostcript
>
> installed
> > $ ps2pdf filename.ps
>
> ps2pdf filename.ps filename.pdf

In this case, 
$ psd2pdf filename.ps
will work by itself unless you want to give (output pdf) a new name 
$ ps2pdf filename.ps other-name.pdf
> Andras

Regards,

Antonio

[Andras Simon]

2012/3/14, Antonio Olivares :
> > > $ ps2pdf filename.ps
> >
> > ps2pdf filename.ps filename.pdf
>
> In this case,
> $ psd2pdf filename.ps
> will work by itself unless you want to give (output pdf) a new name
> $ ps2pdf filename.ps other-name.pdf

I didn't know that! (Well, yes, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't have
tried to correct you :-))
Thanks,

Andras

[Antonio Olivares]

@all who have tried to install kerTeX and have failed, what is needed?

1) make sure that "Development Tools" is installed, if it is not then, as root user
# yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

2) install flex-static, flex and bison are installed but libl.a, or libfl.a are not in /usr/lib/ or /usr/lib64 and are not found, ./get_mk_install.sh will fail with report that it is missing:

for 32 bit fedora 
=========================================
rkconfig:  Checking LEXLIB: not found!
rkconfig:  There were 1 libes not found! Stop!
rkconfig:
rkconfig:  LEXLIB is missing:
rkconfig:
LEXLIB
       The library provided by the LEX program, `libl' or `libfl' if `flex'
       is installed and the symlink libl.a has not been made to libfl.a

=========================================

for 64 bit fedora 
=========================================
rkconfig:  Checking LEXLIB: not found!
rkconfig:  There were 1 libes not found! Stop!
rkconfig:
rkconfig:  LEXLIB is missing:
rkconfig:
LEXLIB
       The library provided by the LEX program, `libl' or `libfl' if `flex'
       is installed and the symlink libl.a has not been made to libfl.a
=========================================
# yum install flex-static

solves this problem so make sure it is installed before you run the script.

$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/get_mk_install.sh

The script runs as regular user, there is no need to run it as root.

$ chmod +x get_mk_install.sh

then you may download the rest of the packages available

$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/amstex.sh
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/latex.sh
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
$ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
$ chmod +x *.sh

then run 
$ ./amstex.sh install
will install amstex
$ ./latex.sh install
will install latex 
$ ./[e-mail] 
will install graphics capabilities for latex

and so on.

Paths will need to be added manually to ~/.bash_profile for the shell to find tex in case you take the initiative to install it.  It can comfortable live with texlive, and tetex in that it does not aim to take over as the main tex distribution.

dvipdfm, pdftex, pdflatex are not found in KerTeX.  But dvips is present and outputs to postcript.  AMSLatex was recently added as a package.  It is a small and portable TeX Distribution.

To include graphics in latex documents, use
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}

In case you run into trouble with fonts/font generation when using -G option in dvips
$ dvips -G -t letter $1.dvi > $1.ps

then, as root user
# echo ';ams;' > /usr/local/share/kertex/fonts/mf/KXPATH

as it has this bug.  It will be fixed shortly.

Should you take the plunge to try out kerTeX, and have questions, comments, observations, please let me know so I can help if needed.

Regards,

Antonio

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Tue, 3/27/12, Antonio Olivares  wrote:
> From: Antonio Olivares 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: "Community support for Fedora users" 
> Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 4:23 PM
> @all who have tried to install kerTeX
> and have failed, what is needed?
> make sure that "Development Tools" is installed, if it is
>
> not then, as root user
> # yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
> install flex-static, flex and bison are installed but
>
> libl.a, or libfl.a are not in /usr/lib/ or /usr/lib64 and
> are not found, ./get_mk_install.sh will fail with report
> that it is missing:
> for 32 bit fedora
>
> rkconfig:  Checking LEXLIB: not found!
> rkconfig:  There were 1 libes not found! Stop!
> rkconfig:
> rkconfig:  LEXLIB is missing:
> rkconfig:
> LEXLIB
>        The library provided by the
> LEX program, `libl' or `libfl' if `flex'
>        is installed and the symlink
> libl.a has not been made to libfl.a
>
> =========================================
> for 64 bit fedora
>
> rkconfig:  Checking LEXLIB: not found!
> rkconfig:  There were 1 libes not found! Stop!
> rkconfig:
> rkconfig:  LEXLIB is missing:
> rkconfig:
> LEXLIB
>        The library provided by the
> LEX program, `libl' or `libfl' if `flex'
>        is installed and the symlink
> libl.a has not been made to libfl.a
> =========================================
> # yum install flex-static
>
> solves this problem so make sure it is installed before you
> run the script.
>
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/get_mk_install.sh
>
> The script runs as regular user, there is no need to run it
> as root.
>
> $ chmod +x get_mk_install.sh
>
> then you may download the rest of the packages available
>
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/amstex.sh
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/latex.sh
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
> $ wget http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/[e-mail]
> $ chmod +x *.sh
>
> then run 
> $ ./amstex.sh install
> will install amstex
> $ ./latex.sh install
> will install latex 
> $ ./[e-mail]
>
> will install graphics capabilities for latex
>
> and so on.
>
> Paths will need to be added manually to ~/.bash_profile for
> the shell to find tex in case you take the initiative to
> install it.  It can comfortable live with texlive, and
> tetex in that it does not aim to take over as the main tex
> distribution.
>
> dvipdfm, pdftex, pdflatex are not found in KerTeX.  But
> dvips is present and outputs to postcript.  AMSLatex
> was recently added as a package.  It is a small and
> portable TeX Distribution.
>
> To include graphics in latex documents, use
> \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
>
> In case you run into trouble with fonts/font generation when
> using -G option in dvips
> $ dvips -G -t letter $1.dvi > $1.ps
>
> then, as root user
> # echo ';ams;' > /usr/local/share/kertex/fonts/mf/KXPATH
>
> as it has this bug.  It will be fixed shortly.
>
> Should you take the plunge to try out kerTeX, and have
> questions, comments, observations, please let me know so I
> can help if needed.
>
> Regards,
> Antonio

Forgot about something :(

when getting the packages, ./latex.sh, /amstex.sh, etc.

==========================================================
[students@localhost kerTeX]$ ./[e-mail] install

KERTEX_VERSION=0.9999.3.0
KERTEX_HOST=linux-x86_64-3.2.10-3.fc16.x86_64
KERTEX_SHELL=/bin/sh
KERTEX_BINDIR=/usr/local/bin/kertex
KERTEX_LIBDIR=/usr/local/share/kertex
KERTEX_MANDIR=/usr/local/share/kertex/man
KERTEX_USER0=root
KERTEX_GROUP0=wheel

[e-mail]:  latex: FOUND.
cd: Fatal error: Certificate verification: Not trusted
This is TeX, kerTeX C Version 3.1415926
! I can't find file `graphics.ins'.
<*> &latex graphics.ins

Please type another input file name:

==========================================================
To solve this:  
cd: Fatal error: Certificate verification: Not trusted

Run from command line 
$ cat >~/.lftp/rc <<EOT
> set ssl:verify-certificate no
> EOT

$

and retry the installation of the packages.  I knew I forgot something.

Happy TeXing & LaTeXing

Regards,

Antonio

[Rex Dieter]

Antonio Olivares wrote:
> Since Fedora still uses texlive2007 on fedora[except the ones using
> texlive-repos by J Novy
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TeXLive ]
>
> The packaging and patents are issues that hold TeXLive in Fedora back. 
> KerTEX is BSD licensed and has no such issues.

Are you sure there are no issues?  Has someone done a licensing review of 
KerTEX like what's currently underway for TeXLive?

-- rex

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Thu, 3/29/12, Rex Dieter  wrote:
> From: Rex Dieter 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: [e-mail]
> Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012, 4:22 PM
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > Since Fedora still uses texlive2007 on fedora[except
>
> the ones using
> > texlive-repos by J Novy
> >
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TeXLive ]
> >
> > The packaging and patents are issues that hold TeXLive
>
> in Fedora back.
> > KerTEX is BSD licensed and has no such issues.

In case it is important to clarify, I will try to do so this statement:

``The packaging and patents are issues that hold TeXLive in Fedora back''

If one installs Fedora 15 or Fedora 16 and you type
# yum install texlive
or another app that will pull it in, say kile, or texmaker, one will get TeXlive 2007, no 2010, no 2011 and one has to use the the repo to get a newer one. If you get the one from the repo, it is crippled.  It does not have all the things that are needed to build books, you can hunt down style files and packages, or try to yum install them, but this is just much easier to get the TeXlive DVD and install it and be done with it.  With the fedora version of TeXLive you can't be done with it :(  This is what I try to state.  There are apparently too many issues and patents and ..., holding it back :(

======================================================================
From:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TeXLive

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 17
    Last updated: 2011-11-06
    Percentage of completion: 60%

It was moved from Fedora 14, to Fedora 15, to Fedora 16, and now to Fedora 17.  When will it be there?  Fedora 25?  60%, that is not working for many tex and latex users that need to typset beautiful documents :(

Scope

Requires packaging or testing and/or enhancements in fedora infrastructure, currently 1627 new packages are to be reviewed and added.

Dependencies

need to do a license audit - done automatically because upstream metadata contains codes for package licenses
    need mass review for all packages before this feature is completed - DONE
    import of all of the ~1600 packages need to be finished
    all of the packages need to be built

Contingency Plan

Stay stuck with TeX Live 2007.

======================================================================

If I want some real work done, I just install TeXLive from DVD and I am good to go.
>

To use a lightweight portable TeX distro, I find KerTeX to be very good.
> Are you sure there are no issues?

Issues with running the program(s)?  Yes, a few bugs have been found and the author has done his best to patch them and release the fixes.  Several fonts were not generated as not all fonts are present.  When using dvips with the -G parameter this was causing some trouble.

Issues with software licenses or patents?  
This is another thing and like I have mentioned, this is what holds (True TexLive Back from DVD).  There are a great deal of many things removed because of the selective process of patents and ..., well you know the story :(  Users just care about TeXing and LaTeXing documents, they need not worry about these things :(  Who is going to sue? whom and why?  One can't do much except simple TeXing and LaTeXing.  One can do the same with KerTeX and it is smaller than the 
$ sed -i |limited|crippled|-insert-word-here| version of TeXLive that Fedora ships :( it is outdated texlive2007, and the texlive 2010, texlive 2011 never made its way into Fedora :( except for the repos by the texlive maintainer!   Probably by Fedora 25 a genuine TeXLive could be in Fedora?  but that is yet to be accomplished :(  TeTeX was great for its time, but no one stepped up to the plate and continued the work by Thomas Esser.  Now, since 2006 it has been depracated.  Only TeXLive is available and people* make a big deal that it is too big, and they become selective of what should be in it and why.  The one that Fedora ships is not up to par with the DVD that is shipped :(  There are many things that are removed and you have the program but you can't do much with it :(

KerTeX is a small distribution of TeX built from original sources by Donald E. Knuth.  It lacks dvipdfm, pdftex, pdflatex and other goodies that many \TeX{}Nicians use, but it is portable works on several versions of *nix.  amstex, latex, graphics, amslatex, and other packages are available to enhance basic TeX functionality.

As for licensing, I believe that kerTeX is more relaxed and one can contact the author as for packaging.  He has been very helpful in creating a SlackBuild since I also use Slackware.  I have used Fedora for a while but I don't understand the rpmbuilding process :(, despite the many howto's, and for what?  people* may not appreciate the effort for packaging it and complain about missing things.

KerTeX does not depend on autoconf, gnu make or other utilities, but uses RISK the author of KerTeX calls it.  It is portable and runs on *BSD variants and Linux.  I have successfully installed it on Fedora, both i386, and x86_64, Slackware x86_64, Porteus Linux Live(successor to Slax LiveCD, I have modules available you can check porteus forum), and on FreeBSD 8.2 amd64, 8.3rc1, 9.0-RELEASE- FreeBSD amd64.

KerTeX can coexist with other TeX Distributions :)  It does not aim to be (THE ONE).  It installs to /usr/local/bin/kertex, or /usr/bin/kertex depending on how you install it.  I have on one machine TeTEX, TeXlive, and KerTEX and have scripts to call the one I need whenever I need it :)  
I don't like to depend on one tex distro only.  I may need the other one or a special package and I have it at my disposal.

For the licensing issues, I can contact the author and ask him for official word as to if the work is BSD Licensed or not, but BSD is more permissive than GPL.  GPL is good, and even it cannot prevent from people taking away rights that are given by the original authors :(

This is what is in the readme

From the README in kerTeX's page:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
             4. Compiling, installing and upgrading.

For motives linked to the licence, but also to clarify what is under the
kerTeX licence and what is not (it was not very clear in the COPYRIGHTS,
all the authors and the licences being cited at the beginning), the
sources have been split in several chunks.

To be short, I [TL] has forked Public Domain code and Public Domain
programs that were officially orphaned by their original. To these are
added my own organization of the whole, modifications and new code.
These elements are the one in kertex_M and kertex_T.

For the other elements that have very permissive licences but are, to my
knowledge, still maintained by their authors, the sources have been put
in dedicated chunks. This allows too more fine grained updating since
kerTeX more frequently than the external sources.

Note 1: these sources are reorganized for kerTeX and have been gathered
from here and there.

Note 2: for the NTS team: the etex.ch in the sources is not the one in
the sources I have found since I had to adapt them for the new TeX
version. I'd like someone to review. Thanks!

It shall be noted that, concerning the licence, two things must be
thought separately: the moral rights, that are inalienable: whether the
code is in the P.D. or not, the author(s) stay(s) the author and
his/their name(s) shall never be erased; secondly, there are the
patrimonial rights (what can be done pratically with the code). I have
made efforts to respect scrupulously this and to give credit when it was
due.

All the authors are cited. And if the cleaning of what had become a mess
could give the original authors the incentive to have pleasure working
back on their code, I will be more than happy !

What has to be done has been written done in:

get_mk_install.sh (for Unices)

get_mk_install.rc (for Plan9)

Both scripts are downloadable on the kerTeX dedicated Web page.
Whether run the script or read it, or both...

http://www.kergis.com/en/kertex.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Has someone done a
> licensing review of 
> KerTEX like what's currently underway for TeXLive?

Probably not :(  Since Fedora is very selective about its software and its methods of what is permitted.  But it would a case of if users and/or developers are interested in packaging KerTeX, then a review should be underway?  Otherwise users that are interested in trying out KerTeX, are welcome to and install it from the script.  If they decide to do this on their own, I will be more than glad to help/advice them.

I hope not to have offended anyone about this, but this is how I see things here with TeXLive on Fedora.  I can post pages where other users will agree with me in case no one believes me.

Regards,

Antonio

[Rex Dieter]

Antonio Olivares wrote:
> ``The packaging and patents are issues that hold TeXLive in Fedora back''

Imo, this is a mischaracterization.  Read for yourself:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/TeXLiveLegalAudit#Why_and_how_to...

-- rex

[Piscium]

On 30 March 2012 02:11, Antonio Olivares  wrote:
> If I want some real work done, I just install TeXLive from DVD and I am good to go.

It is also possible to download it. I did that last week (TexLive 2011
from upstream via mirror). It was straightforward, the only special
thing needed is to set the paths, and the install tool at the very end
helpfully reminds one to do it.

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Fri, 3/30/12, Rex Dieter  wrote:
> From: Rex Dieter 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: [e-mail]
> Date: Friday, March 30, 2012, 8:56 PM
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > ``The packaging and patents are issues that hold
>
> TeXLive in Fedora back''
>
> Imo, this is a mischaracterization.  Read for
> yourself:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/TeXLiveLegalAudit#Why_and_how_to...
>
> -- rex
>
> --

That is good and I know that Fedora goes and checks everything, but the process takes too long, it is 2012 and since 2009 they have been trying to sort out the mess and have not:(.  I apologize if I sound pessimist, but this is one reason why some folks just pop in the Texlive DVD and use that instead of the texlive which is available in Fedora :(

I know that texlive* is a monster(BIG) and there are too many questions about legalities, and blah blah blah.  Why could it not be in RPM fusion not free and people decide on their own to use it or not?

There is a minimal package, i.e, one that is an a package called texlive-tetex, it with a fairly amount of review could be included and a big statement with a disclaimer.
***We cannot include the other packages that are included in official texlive because they do not meet the standards and or policies in place to be distributed by Fedora ***  If you need to use these packages, please get them from another source.  All of this may be preferred instead of just staying with TeXlive 2007 for a good while now :(

If the things were so hard, how come not look at texlive 2007 and all the packages, just adapt the same packages and include texlive 2011 or the new texlive 2012 which is being worked on?

``Why and how to do a legal audit?

Only packages licensed under a free license can successfully pass through review process, i.e. to be included into Fedora. If the licensing is clear, one needs to move the package including headline and title from any of sections to either Fedora approved or Fedora disapproved sections. Please state clearly which license is appropriate to a package if moved to Fedora approved, e.g. adobemapping - BSD. ''

KerTeX is not the one being reviewed or is it?

If it was to be included in Fedora, I'd say it should meet or exceed the requirements.  It is based on the original work of the authors when it was public domain.  There should be no problems.  But again, who would review it and if so, and someone finds something that is wrong, will contacting the author suffice?   And it should not take years to sort the mess out.  My $0.02.

Regards,

Antonio

[Neal Becker]

You can have texlive 2011 if you like:

[texlive]
name=TeX Live
baseurl=http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/2011/packages.fc16/
enabled=1
metadata_expire=1d
gpgcheck=0

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 2012-03-31 at 03:30 -0700, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> KerTeX is not the one being reviewed or is it?

KerTeX is just another packaging of all the components that have been
collected around TeX and LaTeX.  It's not the packaging that's of
concern here, it's the individual components.  I'm sure including KerTeX
would involve the same audit process.

On the other hand, getting the TeXLive audit done will benefit KerTeX as
well, as everything that's common to the two collections will have been
properly vetted.

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Sat, 3/31/12, Neal Becker  wrote:
> From: Neal Becker 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: [e-mail]
> Date: Saturday, March 31, 2012, 8:33 AM
> You can have texlive 2011 if you
> like:
>
> [texlive]
> name=TeX Live
> baseurl=http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/2011/packages.fc16/
> enabled=1
> metadata_expire=1d
> gpgcheck=0
>
> --

I know that, but it* is unofficial :(, it is crippled*, it is <= official TeXLive :(, It will be because of patents* :(, files that are under licenses[that are not approved by Fedora/or the FSF]* :(  The reasons are endless :(  I used it several times, and it works for small things like KerTeX does, but for books, big projects it* needs more to get things done^{1}.  I don't know why and they%[packagers and maintainers] make up their minds and say ok, you will have texlive-core, or texlive-minimum(which satisfy the Fedora and/or FSF requirements).  The rest of the stuff^[which you may need get it from somewhere else] much like the rest of the non-free stuff and illegal which is in Fedora forbidden!

{*} non-free globs are removed like the lib-xine- packages from Fedora that remove the dvd playing capabilities forcing users to look in RPM fusion to get the non-free* parts
{1} things like style files, and packages that are restricted and not freely releaseable :(

KerTeX is small, kerTeX has the functionality and is released under a BSD like License see:

http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/licence_kerTeX_T.txt

At first I did not see things that are normally used, i.e, pdflatex, pdftex, dvipdfm, ..., etc.  But after trying it out and using it, I really like it.  It satisfies the original intentions of Donald E. Knuth, to keep TeX Free for the world to use and enjoy :)

I like TeX/LaTeX and have used it to typeset articles for a professor I had in college.  I just typed the articles, but I learned using it and appreciate its robustness and quality.  The TeX was a gift from Donald E. Knuth to the world and I have used several distros like TeTeX, TeXLive and now KerTeX.

I don't mean to put anyone down, but so much time is lost looking at these things that it puts many \TeX{}Nicians and \LaTeX{} users looking to the real thing**texlive dvd** to get things done and not help out Fedora/Red Hat by using the repo, by testing, suggesting and helping :(

I am being sincere and truthful and like I say I don't mean to put down the efforts of the folks doing this work, but it* sadly takes too long, tracking down individials who made style files and ask them for permission to distribute their style files.  If they don't want for those files to be distributed, why did they made them available in the first place?
Why complicate things for packagers and maintainers that want to give the end users the best latexing/texing experience for their favorite distro(s)?
This is something that I have seen debated and in the end nobody wins :(

Regards,

Antonio

[Rex Dieter]

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?

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

-- rex

[Rex Dieter]

Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> On Sat, 2012-03-31 at 03:30 -0700, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > KerTeX is not the one being reviewed or is it?
>
> KerTeX is just another packaging of all the components that have been
> collected around TeX and LaTeX.  It's not the packaging that's of
> concern here, it's the individual components.  I'm sure including KerTeX
> would involve the same audit process.
>
> On the other hand, getting the TeXLive audit done will benefit KerTeX as
> well, as everything that's common to the two collections will have been
> properly vetted.

Exactly, and in particular, any complaint about items removed from texlive 
due to this would apply equally to any KerTeX fedora packaging as well.

-- rex

[Joe Zeff]

On 03/31/2012 11:54 AM, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Exactly, and in particular, any complaint about items removed from texlive
> due to this would apply equally to any KerTeX fedora packaging as well.

One thought: is it important that you use TeX or just that you be able 
to format/typeset long documents, even books?  In the latter case, you 
might want to check out Scribus, a FOSS page layout program that's in 
use commercially to lay out magazines and books.  I can't tell if it 
fits your needs or not, but it may be worth checking out as it's in the 
repo.  (I know; today's update included both Scribus and its documentation.)

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Sat, 3/31/12, Rex Dieter  wrote:
> From: Rex Dieter 
> Subject: Re: in case you did not know about kerTeX distribution
> To: [e-mail]
> 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

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi Rex,

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 20:53, Rex Dieter  wrote:
> 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?

I use the TeXLive DVD because among other things TiKZ is completely
borked in the Fedora packages.

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 23:48, suvayu ali  wrote:
> Hi Rex,
>
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 20:53, Rex Dieter  wrote:
> > 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?
>
> I use the TeXLive DVD because among other things TiKZ is completely
> borked in the Fedora packages.

I would also be interested to know if it is possible to not have hard
dependencies on texlive for some packages[1], e.g. R, auctex, ooolatex
etc. Then I can safely uninstall the Fedora TeXLive and use the DVD
without keeping duplicates.

[1] I am aware of creating dummy packages, but I'm not very
comfortable with rpmbuild and haven't tried my hand at it.

[nomnex]

> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:46:26 +0100
> Piscium  wrote:
>
> It is also possible to download it. I did that last week (TexLive 2011
> from upstream via mirror). It was straightforward, the only special
> thing needed is to set the paths, and the install tool at the very end
> helpfully reminds one to do it.

Could show me how to set the paths correctly on a default LXDE F-15
install? Thanks.

[Antonio Olivares]

> > It is also possible to download it. I did that last
>
> week (TexLive 2011
> > from upstream via mirror). It was straightforward, the
>
> only special
> > thing needed is to set the paths, and the install tool
>
> at the very end
> > helpfully reminds one to do it.

When installing from the DVD, the setup program asks one if one wants to add the symlinks automagically(i.e set the tex/latex paths).  If this went too fast, you may have to add them manually, but it can be done.
> Could show me how to set the paths correctly on a default
> LXDE F-15
> install? Thanks.
>
> --

In ~/ your home directory create a file ~/.bash_profile if it does not exist, or edit it if it does and add path like:

#!/bin/sh

PATH=/usr/local/bin/texlive2011/:$PATH
export PATH

And it should work.  This will depend on where the tex executable are at.

You may also add them to ~/.bashrc, but in .bash_profile it should work.  Now if you want to add them globally for all users in case the system has more users, a better approach is to add the paths to a file in /etc/profile.d/ with the paths to where the executables are at for texlive.

Hope this helps.  Happy \TeX{}ing and \LaTeX{}ing!

Regards,

Antonio

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 05:40, nomnex  wrote:
> > On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:46:26 +0100
> > Piscium  wrote:
> >
> > It is also possible to download it. I did that last week (TexLive 2011
> > from upstream via mirror). It was straightforward, the only special
> > thing needed is to set the paths, and the install tool at the very end
> > helpfully reminds one to do it.
>
> Could show me how to set the paths correctly on a default LXDE F-15
> install? Thanks.

I use the following shell function:

function texlive_setup() {
    export TLHOME=/opt/texlive/2011 # the TeXLive installation path
    export PATH=$TLHOME/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH
    export MANPATH=$TLHOME/texmf/doc/man:$MANPATH
    # export INFOPATH=$TLHOME/texmf/doc/info:$INFOPATH
 }

Hope this helps.

[nomnex]

> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:21:13 -0700 (PDT)
> Antonio Olivares  wrote:

<snip>
> > Could show me how to set the paths correctly on a default
> > LXDE F-15
> > install? Thanks.
> >
> > --
>
> In ~/ your home directory create a file ~/.bash_profile if it does
> not exist, or edit it if it does and add path like:
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> PATH=/usr/local/bin/texlive2011/:$PATH
> export PATH
>
> And it should work.  This will depend on where the tex executable are
> at.

<snip>
> Antonio

Thank you for the explanations. I did not have time to reply earlier.
nomnex