[tex-live] Amended draft letter (was : install-tl-windows.bat unavailable in Microsoft Store)

Tue Dec 11 14:47:32 CET 2018

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:54:57PM +0000, Philip Taylor wrote:
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>     Draft letter; comments welcomed.<br>
>     <br>
>     Dear <whoever> — <br>
>     <br>
>     I write on behalf of the TeX User Group, and on behalf of
>     (literally) millions of TeX users worldwide.  TeX  is a typesetting
>     system without equal, created by Professor Donald E. Knuth in 1978
>     in order to allow him to re-typeset <i>The Art of Computer
>       Programming </i>to the same standards as those achieved when the
>     first edition was published using traditional hot-lead technology. 
>     Over the next four years Professor Knuth re-wrote substantial parts
>     of TeX and released TeX version 2, to be followed about a decade
>     later by version 3, the version almost universally used today. 
>     Almost since its inception, TeX has run on Microsoft platforms —
>     Eberhard Mattes wrote emTeX for MS/DOS, others developed versions
>     for Microsoft Windows, and until now there have been no significant
>     difficulties in supporting each new version of Windows as it was
>     released.<br>
>     <br>
>     But recently, an <i>impasse</i> has been reached, with the
>     announcement of Windows 10 "S-mode".  As you know, far better than
>     we, S-mode is intended to lock down Windows such that no program
>     that does not come directly from the Microsoft Store can be
>     installed and run.  Having consulted the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
> href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-10-s-planning">technical
>       guideline</a>s describing the constraints placed on a program
>     which is to run in S-mode, TeX's development/implementation team are
>     very concerned that because (for example) TeX makes widespread use
>     of CMD.exe, that in itself is sufficient reason for TeX to be
>     disbarred.<br>
>     <br>
>     We would therefore be very grateful if you could nominate someone
>     within Microsoft with whom we could liaise directly, with a view to
>     ascertaining how these obstacles to the inclusion of TeX (and its
>     adjunct programs) in the Microsoft Store portfolio might best be
>     overcome.<br>

Answers usually come from people working in the field, not from
higher-ups.

Your mail suggests that someone is already spending time on this,
has downloaded, installed and explored Visual Studio and other
resources, and given thought to strategies how to circumvent the
store restrictions, and browsed e.g technet- and stackoverflow sites
for answers and workarounds; and that this someone would be willing
to co-sign this mail.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg