[texworks] MSVC build of Texworks

[Stefan Löffler]

On 2010-11-20 10:09, Bruno Voisin wrote:
> Le 20 nov. 2010 à 09:19, Mehdi Omidali a écrit :
>
>> It seems that the MSVC build of texworks in MikTex has a good
>> bidirectional algorithm than MinGW build of texworks in Texlive 2010.
> The MikTeX people have apparently developed their own brand of TeXworks, adding extensions here and there, without AFAIK getting in touch with the TeXworks developer or submitting their patches to the TeXworks code base.

Yes, and no. AFAIK, they haven't gotten in touch with Jonathan, and they
haven't submitted any patches either. However, from what I can tell,
most changes are specific to the directory layout of MiKTeX, and
therefore of little to no use for the general Tw code base.

> At times I even wonder whether that's compatible with the GPL2, or whether the modified software can still be called TeXworks.

IANAL, but they do make their source code available (run `svn co
https://miktex.svn.sf.net/svnroot/miktex/miktex/trunk/Programs/Editors/TeXworks`
to get it). And it seems it's still licensed as GPL2.
Whether or not you can call it Tw is a different matter. But as long as
they just adapt some things to fit their system and possibly apply
patches posted on GC, I personally don't really have a problem with that.

>> Is it possible to change that of texlive to MSVC build or is it
>> possible to put an MSCV build of the current texworks in googlecode or
>> http://www.leliseron.org/texworks/.
> MSVC (Microsoft Visual C++) being commercial software, I'm not sure that a MSVC build would be compatible with the licence TeX Live is distributed under. But IANAL.

I guess it would. The license basically protects the ideas and the
source code. What you use to turn them into an executable doesn't really
matter, IMO. But IANAL either ;). The only thing that could be difficult
is which libraries to redistribute (there are some peculiarities, IIRC).
But over all, I think legally there shouldn't be a problem.
In practice, the problem is more that it's often very difficult to get
things running in MSVC - especially so if the projects in question use
the GNU build system. Using MinGW in those circumstances is just so much
more convenient (and, on a sidenote, is possible for cross-compiling for
Windows on other platforms; e.g., I can build Tw for Windows on Linux).

-Stefan