Re: texmf and texmf-dist?

Hi Thomas, 

Thank you for your reply. 

As you see, I wrote "/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf" twice 
(it was a cut&paste). I'm sorry. I mean: 

> Can I use: 
> # mkdir -p /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf 
> (as before) and forget the texmf-dist dir? 

Ok. Now I know I have to create both directories: texmf and texmf-dist. 

As I'm reinstalling teTeX (I have already erased the old version) I'd like 
to know if I have to give both commands: 

1 - extract texmf.tar into texmf-dist: 
# gzip -dc tetex-texmf.tar.gz \
      | (umask 0; cd /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf-dist; tar xvf -)

2 - extract texmf.tar into texmf (as in teTeX-2.0): 
# gzip -dc tetex-texmf.tar.gz \
      | (umask 0; cd /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf; tar xvf -)

(I only did the item (1) and followed the steps 3-6 in INSTALL, 
but I didn't get /usr/local/teTeX/bin dir in step 6)

Tks, 

Eduardo. 

PS: everything worked fine when I installed teTeX-2.0. 

> > What the texmf dir is for?
>
> The texmf-dist has the unmodified files as distributed and nothing else.
> That makes it very easy to replace that tree. If you mix it with
> $TEXMFMAIN, you loose this functionality.
>
> Some links in TETEXDOC and texmf/doc/index.html won't work if you don't
> use the name texmf-dist.
>
> I don't recommend to mix texmf-dist and $TEXMFMAIN.
>
> Thomas