[tex-live] Minimal TeX system?

[Karl Berry]

Hi Casey,

    What I had in mind was something to process plain
    .tex files, and something to turn the resultant DVIs into PDFs. 

The extended TeX called pdftex will produce pdf's directly, instead of
DVI.  (pdftex has been around a long time.)

    I suppose I might like to have to have some nice fonts like Computer
    Modern, etc.

Indeed, it would not be possible to typeset anything without fonts :).

    Can anyone point me in the right direction? 

One way is to run the TL cmdline installer install-tl.sh (it should work
on macosx, just be sure it uses bash).

Then use the s command to change the scheme.  Set it to scheme-basic.

Then use the c command to change collections.  Deselect
collection-latex, leavin just collection-basic.

Then use the p command to change packages.  Deselect everything you
don't want.

Then i to install (after making any changes to paths, options, etc.),
and should have a non-latex installation.

As suggested, I imagine it is possible to do something more or less
equivalent with i-Installer, then deselecting all the latex packages,
but I don't know details.

Hope this helps,
karl