[tex-live] TL vs. MiKTeX [was: Re: Perl for Windows]

[Hans Hagen]

Juergen Fenn wrote:
> Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz at oucs.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>
>   
>> Fabrice Popineau wrote:
>>     
>>> Anyway,  the Windows slot  is perfectly filled   by MiKTeX and there are
>>> certainly much more MiKTeX users ... than
>>> teTeX/TeXLive/whatever web2c based users. 
>>>       
>> and the evidence for this statement is where, exactly......?
>>     
>
> Have a look into the mailing lists and into the newsgroups. Hardly
> anyone mentions TL for Windows there any more. Since Fabrice quit
> TeXLive (thanks for your excellent work, Fabrice), MiKTeX took over
> because it is so easy to install and easy to update, despite all its
> shortcomings. These are the reasons mentioned most often when MiKTeX 
> is recommended.
>   
as already mentioned, when one runs multiple trees, fptex binaries are quite useful; i'm not sure where ptex gets the sources from, but that one is popular in the far east (where they also have their own unix variants if i'm right) 

if i remember right, the main reason for fabrice to quit was the fact that it was impossible to reach a state where there is one code base (merged patches and so) and that fact alone made me feel rather sad

miktex's success is, apart from sophisticated packaging, also due to the fact that the author went its one way and is free from cross platform woes; however, i dunny what the state is of the miktex unix port (announced some tiem ago on the website) 

Hans 

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