[tex-live] TL'10 pretest trial

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> We intend to support Windows as long as this system exists.  You are
> obviously a user who hasn't the slightest idea about the problems
> developers have to solve.  Supporting Windows is a pain, not because
> it's different from Unix, the problem is that nothing works as
> advertised.

I think that a more accurate casting of that last part
would be "nothing works as we expect it to".

> For example, the C runtime library (MSVCRT.DLL) claims that signals
> are supported.  Please run
>
>     ftype | more
>
> and press "q", and see what happens.

This is what is classically called a "non sequitur" : just because
a Borg-Warner gearbox claims that engine speed sensing is supported
doesn't mean that I should expect my SAAB 9000 engine to never
exceed 5500 rpm.  And just because "signals are supported" doesn't mean
that they are correctly generated when the consumer of a pipe
terminates before the producer, nor does it mean that "ftype"
has been correctly written to handle such signals.  The problem
may originate in any one of many places : it doesn't in any way
demonstrate that the statement "signals are supported" is incorrect.

** Phil.