[tex-live] Status of restricted \write18 and epstopdf conversion

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Philip TAYLOR a écrit :
> Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:
> 
>> Note that is it sort of the current situation: uberTeX is called
>> 'tex -shell-escape' :-)
> 
> OK, but is it not the case that, unless instructed otherwise,
> the TeX Live installer can/will install that option and make
> it the default, such that a user thereafter invoking just
> "TeX" will in fact get "TeX -shell-escape" ?

No, it is not the case, and it never was the plan. The plan was that the
default enabled a *restricted* version of shell-escape, able to run only
a few carefully checked commands, in order to avoid tex begin equivalent
to 'tex -shell-escape'. We finally withdrawn that for TL09 since some
problems were found.

> IMHO, this is
> the most dangerous aspect : by all means require the user
> to explicitly type "TeX -shell-escape" (or "uberTeX"), but
> never never never set up the system such that the same effect
> may thereafter be achieved simply by typing TeX ...
> 
Restricted shell-escape is not at all the same as the current
-shell-escape feature. I we think a bit about it, *tex is already
capable of running a few external commands (the mktex* scripts for all
of them, dvipdfmx for XeTeX). The point is to be able to control
precisely which commands can be run from a tex document.

Manuel.

> ** Phil.