Re: omitting collection-fontsextra installation by default? (RFC)

Hi Bruno and all,

    I wasn't proposing anything specifically. Karl asked for comments.

Yes, thanks :).

The dynamic download done by Macs and MiKTeX remains an unsolved problem
in TL.

Other remarks:

    My concern was that, the way things were presented by Karl, if I
    understood correctly, a user missing one single font not part of the
    default set would have to install the whole collection-fontsextra,
    about 2.5 GB.

I must have been unclear. Users can always install individual font
packages, "tlmgr install junicode" or whatever. The collections mostly
come into play just at installation.

    font amounts to installing its associated package in tlmgr, with all
    dependencies taken care of, right?

In theory yes, but in practice dependencies are not specified.  E.g.,
cjs-rcs-article (Vincent's journal class, I believe) has no
dependencies. ltx-talk has no dependencies. Etc. And I cannot recommend
to the authors that they bother to define such dependencies, because
it's rather a hassle to figure out, with little benefit.

Anyway ... I think Vincent and others who wrote me privately have
convinced me it's not a good idea for the default to be anything but
"install everything".  Possibly I'll add another scheme for "everything
but c-fontsextra", but not sure even that is worth it. --thanks, karl.