[racket-dev] Latex files

An hour and a half ago, Robby Findler wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Robby Findler
> > <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> >> Does it seem okay to provide a script that downloads the .cls file
> >> from the jfp website and tuck it into the (already installed)
> >> distribution (presumably in a user-specific place)?
> >
> > Yes, this is a well-known workaround in these sorts of situations.
> > It's used for packages that install Flash on lots of Linux
> > distributions, for example.
> >
> > I think it would probably be sufficient to provide a .cls file that
> > errors with a message indicating where to go to get the file, although
> > the script you describe would certainly be a helpful addition.

I completely agree with that -- what's the best links for the two
files?


> I guess it depends how much we are worried they will produce backwards
> incompatible .cls files.

I don't think that this is a problem.  These files do two things --
they change the layout etc (so there's no additional commands to use),
and much less frequently they add commands.  I think that if there's a
new version that *breaks* some existing command, then it's likely
something different enough that you'd want to use it anyway.  That's
on top of the fact that the first kind of change is frequent enough
that I think that people are likely to end up using the updated
version anyway.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!