[tex-live] tlmgr --self

Uwe Siart usenet at siart.de
Sat Aug 1 10:50:37 CEST 2009


This is my first attempt to post to the list via gmane. I hope I'm doing
everything right.

Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> writes:

> On Thu, 30 Jul 2009, T T wrote:
>> > Because:
>> >        --no-remove
>> >                makes tlmgr ignore remove tags
>> >        --no-auto-install
>> >                makes tlmgr ignore auto-install tags
>> >        --no-forcibly-removed
>> >                makes tlmgr ignore forcibly-removed tags
>> 
>> I admit that I don't like this naming too much either,
>> --no-forcibly-removed might be consistent but is quite confusing.
>
> Better proposal?

I would like to propose that the options are not chosen to correctly
reflect how they are implemented but to reflect the user-visible impact.

The prefix »no« is consistent because either option ignores some tags.
But the user has no idea about those tags. He might think that »no« is
due to exclusion of a certain species from the action. Therefore, what I
(as a user) would expect is:

--no-remove
    *excludes* packages that are tagged to be removed
--no-auto-install
    *excludes* packages that are tagged to be installed
--forcibly-removed
    *includes* packages that have been forcibly removed

From

--no-forcibly-removed

I would eexpect that forcibly removed packages are *excluded* from the
update action while the opposite is the case.

Of course the result of any particular option is correctly described in
--help and be figured out from there. But I think that
--no-forcibly-removed will be a trap for many users because it reflects
the internal implementation of the option (it excludes a tag) but it
does not reflect the user visible effect (it includes packages in the
action).

This is just my way of thinking about this. Other users may grasp it
differently.

-- 
Uwe



More information about the tex-live mailing list