[tex-live] web2c-win32 volunteer?

Hans Hagen pragma at wxs.nl
Tue Apr 13 12:03:52 CEST 2004


At 13:34 11/04/2004, George N. White III wrote:
>On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Karl Berry wrote:
>
> > Bad news everyone -- Fabrice has decided not to continue maintaining
> > web2c-win32 (he'll keep on with his xemtex distribution with pdf and
> > html output only .. which, for now, unfortunately, won't keep the
> > general populace happy).  I know we all appreciate his heroic efforts to
> > date in making the distribution work under Windows.  Thank you, Fabrice.
>
>I second this.  Windows really is a hostile environment for a TeX
>based on a unix distro.

indeed.

>There is also teTeX on cygwin.  4AllTeX (the preferred distro of our
>Win32 users for years) lagged in support for pdftex and MikTeX had
>conflicts (.dll versions) with some of our other apps.  Cygwin and
>teTeX was the only way to accomplish certain tasks on Win32.

but cygwin is a monster to install (when backing up my system a few days 
ago i noticed the incredible amount of files)

>Xemtex is clearly differentiated from MikTeX.  With the exception of
>ConTeXt and users who move between teTeX on *n*x and Win32, MikTeX
>serves well.  I don't know if there are still people encountering

hm, context should work ok with miktex

>My guess is that it would not be too hard to provide Cygwin teTeX
>together with *n*x and OSX, but it has been over a year since I used
>Cygwin teTeX, so I don't know if there is a current port.

but cygwin tetex is not really that suited for more demanding apps as well 
as intergration in non cygwin editors and alike,

if we look at what is neeed for windows, we're talking about

- a bunch of binaries
- an installer

generating and maintining the binaries is -as you said- crippled by the 
hostile starting point, while the installer is crippled by complex 
dependecies and inconsistencies; simply changing to a 'simulated unix on 
windows' will not solve that problem; we have to accept that 
unix/windows/mac have their own specific demands, pro's and con's and that 
a 'generic' distrubition should address their problematic areas with equal 
priorities.

Hans  



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