Re: LaTeX package dependencies

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

On Mar 26, 2010, at 10:11 AM, Karsten Heymann wrote:

> Hi,
>
> David Maus <dmaus@ictsoc.de> writes:
>> Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>> I am working on better entity (special symbol) support for
>>> export, based on a list Ulf Stegemann has compiled.
>>> The list Ulf has sent me requires the following LaTeX
>>> packages to be available:
>>
>>> * t1enc
>>> * textcomp
>>> * marvosym
>>> * wasysym
>>> * MnSymbol
>
>> On Debian GNU/Linux "Testing" these packages are available:
>>
>> ,----
>> | t1enc texlive-latex-base: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/base/ 
>> t1enc.sty
>> | textcomp texlive-latex-base: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ 
>> base/textcomp.sty
>> | marvosym texlive-fonts-recommended: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/ 
>> latex/marvosym/marvosym.sty
>> | wasysym texlive-fonts-recommended: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/ 
>> latex/wasysym/wasysym.sty
>> | MnSymbol texlive-fonts-extra: /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ 
>> mnsymbol/MnSymbol.sty
>> `----
>
> A small note on this: anything that's in tex/latex/base can be trusted
> to be included in any LaTeX installation (newer than ~10 years,  
> probably
> ;-) ). Regarding marvosym, wasysym, mnsymbol: I think they are quite
> popular, but I would recommend to ship simple-text-alternatives via
> \providecommand for all symbols used from these packages.


Hi Karsten,

seems like you know what you are talking about.  So maybe you can help  
me with this.

I would like to

1. Require these packages with \usepackage or similar, but not
    have an error thrown when they are not available

2. Provide, as you say, alternative versions with providecommand.
    How would I do this?  What do you mean by simple-text-alternatives?

Thanks!

- Carsten