[Info-vax] LaTeX etc. on VMS

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

About 20 years ago, Ralf Gärtner put together a [TEXMF...] distribution 
which was on a DEC freeware CD.  I installed it on ALPHA and am still 
using it.  When I occasionally needed a package I didn't have, I 
downloaded it from somewhere and put it somewhere in the LaTeX path.  
Occasionally I have seen errors or warnings complaining that something 
was too old, but never have I noticed any corresponding problem in the 
output.

Is there something similar but more modern?

If so, would it make sense to upgrade to it, or only when I need to?

VMS will be available on X86 soon.  At the least, but probably only 
that, the executables will have to be generated again, presumably from 
compiling the sources and then linking.  This might be a good motivation 
to revamp LaTeX on VMS.

I might do it myself a) if I have to and b) if no-one better qualified 
(which isn't setting the bar very high) will (or already has).  Of 
course, ideally one could just download some complete TeXMF tree from 
ctan or wherever and run a simple script which would compile and so on 
and VMS, and there would be a simple script run at boot to set things up 
(and perhaps also something run from (SY)LOGIN.

While I understand the idea of packages, nevertheless disks are so cheap 
these days that surely it would be no problem at all to have EVERYTHING 
in the default TeXMF installation.  Is there such a distribution?

I won't have any time to do anything myself until about a year and a 
half from now, but if anyone is interested, reply here and/or via email.