[Info-vax] modern LaTeX on VMS (Alpha)

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 3 Dec 2011 21:03:28 +0000 (UTC) helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) wrote:

> 
> I know I've asked similar questions in the past, but now I have the time 
> to finally get something done.
> 
> My LaTeX installation is about a dozen years old.  For most things, it 
> works fine, but there are some issues involving scalable fonts, the 
> times package, psnfss, "missing" .FD files etc.
> 
> In the somewhat longer term, I suppose there are several solutions:
> 
>    1  Re-install everything from scratch from some modern distribution.
>       (Mine is essentially by Ralf Gärtner which was on a freeware CD
>       back in the 1990s.)
> 
>    2  Keep my existing installation, but upgrade it completely and more
>       or less automatically.
> 
>    3  Keep my existing installation, but upgrade it just to fix errors
>       and warnings when they occur.
> 
>    4  Get some other modern distribution and adapt it for VMS.
> 
> In terms of desirability, from most to least, the order is 1, 4, 2, 3.  
> In terms of speed, from fastest to slowest, the order is probably 
> something like 2, 3, 1, 4 (perhaps 3, 2, 1, 4 if there are very few 
> warnings and errors).
> 
> Any ideas?

1 or 4 is actually likely to be the easiest and most trouble.  And this
would likely also be the fastest actually.  The core TeX engine(s) are
coded in C (via Web to C I guess) and in pretty standard vanila C at
that. 

> 
> Does anyone actually have an up-to-date LaTeX running on VMS?  At least 
> if it is similar to the one from the freeware CD, there are just a few 
> places where one needs local customization, so I could just get an 
> entire up-to-date [TEXMF...], edit a couple of files, and be set.

It should be pretty trivial to just recompile the compiled code (base
TeX engine, dvito<whatever>, metafont, etc.), re-generate the fmt files,
and diddle the config files, etc.  Compiling the C code should be
straightforward and painless and everything else is pretty much automated.

> 
>                                                  

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
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