TeX Live - Unix TeX on a CD-ROM

In May 1996 the TeX Users Group, the UK TeX Users Group and the French TeX Users Group (GUTenberg), in collaboration with members of other groups and helpful individuals, produced a plug-and-play CD-ROM of Thomas Esser's teTeX, based on Karl Berry's Web2c, with a support tree adhering to the TDS (TeX Directory Structure) tree structure.

The second edition of TeX Live was released in May 1997 and is based on Web2c 7.0, with some additions from teTeX.

The third edition will be released in April 1998, and is based on Web2c 7.2

The changes in TeX Live 3 include:

Based on the 7.2 release of the Web2c system, with some additions from teTeX
Includes the latest Omega, pdftex and e-TeX
Web2c binaries for Windows 95/Windows NT now include xdvi for Windows
Updated LaTeX, EC fonts, packages, CM Type1 fonts
Microsoft Joliet CD-ROM extensions to allow Win32 users direct access to all files
Documentation on the CD-ROM in HTML and other formats

Quick Reference:

The contents of the CD
Supported Unix systems
How to buy the CD
Using the CD on non-Rock Ridge systems
Known bugs and problems

The contents of the CD

The support tree includes the complete LaTeX from December 1997, patch level 1 release, all tools, and most of the contributed packages on CTAN; format files are provided with the appropriate hyphenation patterns for around 20 languages; other formats include context, eplain, texsis and amstex. Other sets of miscellaneous macros are also included. Font families include CM (including the Blue Sky/Y&Y Type 1 versions of the fonts), EC, TC, AMS, Euler, Concrete, and the complete set of PostScript metrics from CTAN.

Source material for all packages, fonts and programs is on the CD. Documentation is available in at least one (and sometimes all) of dvi, HTML, PostScript and PDF

It may help potential purchasers to see the top level structure of the CD:

bin The TeX family programs, arranged in separate platform directories.
doc Documentation for TeXLive.
FAQ Frequently Asked Questions, in English, French and German.
include kpathsea include files, for programmers.
info Documentation in GNU `info' format for the TeX system.
lib kpathsea library files, for programmers.
man Documentation in Unix man pages for TeX programs;
rr_moved A side effect of the CD-ROM creation, to be ignored by users.
source The source of all programs, including the main Webc TeX and METAFONT distributions.
support Various bits of TeX-related software which are not installed by default, such as MusixTeX support programs, and a complete distribution of Ghostscript.
systems Packaged TeX systems which are separate from the main TeXLive. Subdirectories in here are:
- amiga Extra support programs for the Amiga.
- macintosh The OzTeX and CMacTeX packages ready to install, plus some other utilities.
- msdos DOS TeX packages - djgppTeX, and three TeX shells.
- win32 TeX packages for Windows 95 and NT users - MikTeX, and the editor/shell WinEdt.
- wingut The GUTenberg TeX distribution for Windows.
texmf The main support tree of macros, fonts and documentation;
TUG Material about the TeX Users Group.

Supported Unix systems

Presently Unix executables for the following platform/operating system combinations are included:

DEC Alpha (3.2 and 4.0)
Amiga
HP9000 HPUX 10.10
Linux (on Intel Pentium)
SGI IRIX (5.3 and 6.2)
IBM RS 6000 AIX (3.2.5 and 4.1.1)
Sun Sparc Sunos 4.1.3
Sun Sparc Solaris (2.5.1 and 2.6)
Windows 95 or NT (Intel machines)

As the CD-ROM uses the ISO 9660 standard, the platform-independent files can, in principle, be read on all operating systems which are compatible with that format. To preserve the complete Unix/POSIX file system information the file tree was recorded with the Rock Ridge extensions, so that long filenames are honored. Some operating systems, most notably MS-DOS, do not support these extensions, so that only the ISO 9660 filenames are used, but with this limitation, the files are readable on all systems.

Buying the CD

The CD can be purchased from the TeX Users Group, or the local user groups in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In all cases the cost includes postage and packing. You can find contact addresses here

Using the CD on non-Rock Ridge systems

The CD is in ISO 9660 (High Sierra) format, with Rock Ridge extensions. In order to take full advantage of the CD on a Unix system, your system needs to be able to use the Rock Ridge extensions. Please consult the documentation for your mount command to see if it is possible.

If you have several different machines on a local network, see if you can mount the CD on one which does support Rock Ridge, and use it from the others;

Linux, FreeBSD, Sun, SGI and DEC Alpha systems should be able to use the CD with no problems. We would appreciate receiving detailed advice from other system users who also succeed, for future versions of this documentation.

Michael Marxmeier (mike@msede.com) informs us that while HP-UX does not support the Rock Ridge extensions, they have a licensed a 3rd party solution called pfs (portable file system) which can be downloaded free of charge from HP. pts is a user-mode solution and needs no kernel modification or patch. Quoting from a HP WWW page:

Portable File System (PFS) is Now Available and Supported by HP

The Portable File System (PFS) CD-ROM driver from Young Minds, Inc. that supports Rock Ridge, High Sierra and ISO 9660 formatted CD-ROM discs, is now available and supported by HP for HP-UX 9.*. This is the software that will allow you to convert upper-case characters to their native "lower case".

If you have an operating system software support contract with HP, you should be able to find the unlocked PFS code on the DART application CDs begining with DART 25 - released in October 1995.

For HP-UX 10.* users, PFS will become a part of the core operating system with the release of HP-UX 10.10.

If you are a HP-UX 9.* user in need of PFS, but don't currently receive the DART releases described above, the PFS software can be obtained off the World Wide Web.

The README file includes instructions on how to download the Portable File System (PFS) Driver (860kb).

The URLs are: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/demos/grfxdemos/pfs/README
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/demos/grfxdemos/pfs/pfs.tar.Z

being prepared

Author: Sebastian Rahtz.

Last modified: March 1998.

Please send comments by email to s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk

webmaster@tug.org, March 12, 1998.