tex in smgl for nt (fwd) OT

[Marcel Kunath]

I had sent an email to a guy who provides a tutorial for NTEmacs. I
noticed he switched tex versions in the latest release and asked
simply "why?" I thought he gave a pretty interesting answer.

One of the things which tick me off lately is that whenever you
install a program in Windows you download an installer of small size
and it then installs the program for you. It leaves you no ability in
many cases to save the actual install software so you can reuse it for
your network of computers. For people with download limits this sucks
and as well for archiving sake its unpractical.

Forwarded
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> To: "Marcel Kunath" <kunathma@pilot.msu.edu>
> Subject: tex in smgl for nt
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> Hi Marcel,
>
> there were two reasons to switch. The first one is mainly important
> for myself: after switching the Cygwin setup to the Cygwin TeX
> binaries I ended up with a system that is based on teTeX (the leading
> TeX distribution for Unix/Linux). fpTeX is also based on teTeX, with
> the main difference that it uses native Win32 applications that do not
> depend on Cygwin. The administration is essentially the same, so this
> simplifies providing instructions for systems with and without Cygwin.
>
> The other reason is partly practical and partly philosophical, and I
> apologize that it will take a few lines to explain this. First of all,
> TeX is probably the most widely ported layout system in the world, it
> runs on a lowly Atari as well as on an IBM mainframe. And on
> Windows. Due to the portability it does not rely on any
> Windows-specific features like the registry or anything else. But
> still Christian Schenk (the MikTeX maintainer) managed to fall prey to
> Microsoft's lock-in strategy. This works as follows:
>
> While I was preparing the latest update of my tutorial, I tried to
> upgrade MiKTeX on my WinNT4SP3 system, but the installer told me that
> I first have to upgrade a couple of system files in order to
> proceed. Previously Christian kept local copies of the required files,
> but with the current version he stopped providing these. The only
> solutions are: (1) purchase an OS upgrade (2) download Internet
> Explorer. The latter means downloading up to 75MB for a browser that I
> have no intention to use. And please understand that these jumps
> through hoops are not necessary to run *TeX* on my system, they are
> just necessary to run the *Installer*! So even if you want to run the
> most portable layout system, you're locked into Microsoft's browser
> and OS upgrade spiral.
>
> At this point I gave up and looked at fpTeX which installs without a
> hitch even on old systems. Then I tried to find a standalone DVI
> viewer for the Cygwin setup as the Cygwin TeX port does not include
> such a thing. I tried to download Yap (which is a very decent viewer
> indeed) but had to find out that Christian now uses .cab files instead
> of the widely supported .zip or .tar.gz files. .cab files are another
> Microsoft invention which have no technical merit above the other
> formats that would excuse their use. NT has a command-line utility to
> extract .cab files, but lookee: The format has changed since and my
> version of the tool can't extract these .cabs. So to just install one
> MiKTeX binary I'm again required to send money to Redmond (or buy a
> Winzip upgrade).
>
> I can't help it but the latest MiKTeX is an example of exceptionally
> bad software design which erects unnecessary hurdles for a TeX system
> that otherwise would run without a problem on even the oldest Win32
> box. I have no idea whether Christian did this intentionally or
> whether he just does not think abouth the consequences of what he is
> doing.
>
> To make my point that these hurdles are unnecessary indeed, I'd like
> to point out that the fpTeX installer works exactly the same way as
> the MiKTeX installer, but it runs on any Win32 system (just like the
> TeX binaries that both systems install). Another example is the Cygwin
> installer which again does exactly the same thing. The latter is a
> plain Win32 application (does not depend itself on Cygwin) and is
> released under the GPL. I'm sure that a skilled programmer like
> Christian could adapt this installer to MiKTeX in one afternoon and
> thus avoid the Microsoft lock-in altogether.
>
> In any case, now you may understand the point that I don't want to
> start the TeX chapter in my tutorial with (1) "buy a new Windows" or
> (2) "get Internet Explorer, regardless of whether you want to use
> it or not". This would be a bad tutorial.
>
> regards,
> Markus
>
>
> Marcel Kunath writes:
>  > Hey Markus,
>  >
>  > I saw you updated your instructions for sgml in ntemacs. Nice work as it no
w
>  > includes xml.
>  >
>  > I had one question. The old version relied on Miktex and the new one relies
 on
>  > fptex. Can I ask why you made this change?
>  >
>  > Thanks,
>  >
>  > Marcel
>
> --
> Markus Hoenicka
> hoenicka_markus@compuserve.com
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/
>
>