memoir package is extremely outdated

[Alexander van Loon]

Binary package hint: texlive-latex-recommended

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04, and the Ubuntu package texlive-latex-recommended ships a version of the memoir package which is dated 2007/01/22 while the most recent version on CTAN – http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/ – was last updated on 2009/02/06. In 2008 the memoir package received quite a few important updates as well. Why does the Ubuntu package texlive-latex-recommended in Jaunty – which was released in 2009/04 – not ship with a recent version of the memoir package? Could this please be corrected?

[teknopartz (jmailbox)]

I'm getting errors in latex that I think may be due to this issue. Trying to find an update for memoir now.

[Alexander van Loon (avanloon)]

teknopartz: download the latest memoir package here – http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/ – then follow the installation instructions – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LaTeX#manualpkginstall – for installing a package manually.

Currently in Lucid, the memoir package is rather old as well. With an up-to-date texlive-latex-recommended package the file /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/memoir/memoir.cls reads that it’s dated 2009/09/21. Meanwhile, the memoir version included in TeX Live, which I suppose is the file memoir.source.tar.xz seen here – http://archive.cs.uu.nl/mirror/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive/ – is dated 2010/02/21.

[teknopartz (jmailbox)]

Cheers for the help! I have managed to get the newer version of memoir working at last. The manual install worked in the end - just felt like a rather awkward process copying over files in /usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/memoir/ to make it work. Now when I compile the tex code with latex I see "Document Class: memoir 2010/02/20 v1.618033988c" which looks much better and it works fine.

I don't think I have used latex much before so I'm glad I have managed to get this far and will likely find it useful.