[tex-live] [Fwd: Re: TeXLive Perl + latexmk (windows)]

[Philipp Stephani]

Am 14.04.2010 um 03:43 schrieb Reinhard Kotucha:

> On 14 April 2010 Philipp Stephani wrote:
> 
>> Am 13.04.2010 um 14:55 schrieb Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard:
>> 
>>> Not that I'm a big fan of windows, but let's not exaggerate the
>>> problems with this system.
>> 
>> There are no substantial problems with Windows, only wrong
>> expectations. If you expect Windows to behave like Linux, you're
>> going to be disappointed. MikTeX is popular because it feels like a
>> native Windows application, while TeX Live still seems to be biased
>> towards Linux.
> 
> Because TeX Live avoids the crappy Widows registry, or what?  Nothing
> within TeX Live is Linux-specific or platform-specific at all.  TeX
> Live just supports ***all*** operating systems which are in use today.
> There is absolutely no reason why people shouldn't use TeX Live under
> Windows.
> 
> Can you explain why Windows users should use MikTeX instead of TeX
> Live?  Did you ever try TeX Live on Windows yourself?  If yes, what's
> wrong with TeX Live?

I'm not in the position to judge this as I don't use TeX on Windows, but I've read a few opinions in the newsgroups that MikTeX still seems to be preferred on Windows. My post is not intended to be a criticism of TeX Live, which I like much and have been using for years.
Some general thoughts: Operating-system independence is impossible because the look and feel of operating systems differ a lot. An application should have a native graphical interface that blends well with the operating system—MacTeX does that (the installation process, TeX Live Manager, TeXshop), but I'm not sure about Windows or Linux. It (the application) should be stored in the standard program directory (e.g. C:\Program Files), and should be able to access arbitrary valid Unicode file names, meaning that the standard C functions cannot be used, etc.
My point is that if you want to take users from MikTeX, there must be something that is better than the MikTeX equivalent.