Bug 278052 – dev-texlive/texlive-latex-2008-r1: stop installing a4wide.sty and a4.sty files

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM

[Description Pacho Ramos 2009-07-16 13:59:56 UTC]

Currently, texlive-latex is installing these deprecated and failing packages:
/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ntgclass/a4.sty
/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ltxmisc/a4wide.sty

Its usage is discouraged as can be seen in:
ftp://dante.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.pdf (section 1.1):
"1.1 a4.sty, a4wide.sty
Do not use these ‘two’ packages any longer. You should delete them without replacement from
your LATEX source. Use the class option a4paper instead. Speaking in terms of typography
these packages, or others similar to these do not provide good layout. What is even worse, there
is more than one version of these packages around, and different versions of those packages
are incompatible with one another, providing deviating settings for page margins. So you may
not trust that your document will look the same—or just as bad? – when being compiled on
someone else’s system when exchanging LATEX source.
Replace: a4.sty, or a4wide.sty by class option a4paper"

I also got this problem while using lyx and this recommendation was "enforced":
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/4872
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6084

Thanks a lot

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 Alexis Ballier 2009-07-18 11:05:03 UTC]

What do you expect ebuild side? If you want them to get removed then that's a big no no and ask upstream to remove them for the 2009 version. Even if it's deprecated some people expect it to be there and probably some packages require it for building their documentation.

Just don't use them if they're that bad and you'll be happy :)

[Comment 2 Pacho Ramos 2009-07-18 15:15:40 UTC]

OK, no problem :-)