[tex-live] Which release ?

[Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd)]

Norbert Preining wrote:

 > Aehm, I was talking about a Win32 menu item .... to cite what I wrote:

 > Ah ok, but what is the need for that? BTW, that is the documentation,


 > My remark was about
 > 	Start->Programs->TeX Live 2008->whatever
 > whatever you mentioned before.
 >
 > So I still stand to my comment that I see no use to make something
 > special for win32 (we already do quite a lot of things) to find the
 > version number.
 >
 > Martin answered that question:
 >>> The output of "texconfig conf" starts with a section "version
 >>> information". Does TL2008 offer meaningful information there? If not,
 >>> that's the place it should be.
 >
 > texconfig conf, AFAIR did issue the release number in the last years,
 > and it will do that in 2008, too.

OK, if I start with the last point, I can then more
easily work backwards : under Win32, there is no
command "texconfig", so that route cannot be used
to ascertain the version number.  (Checked using
the 2007 release).

Which means that under Win32, an alternative route
to checking the version number is needed.  As Win32
is (as its name implies) a Windows system, a
Windows-based route (as opposed to a command-
line route) would be more natural for Windows
users.  The latter are very used to "Help / About"
displaying the version number (something I find
astonishingly counter-intuitive, I might say :
as a naive Windows user (ex-VMS) I was very
frustrated to find that the last thing that "Help
/ About" gave me was any /useful/ information
about the program !  So to summarise :

a) "texconfig" doesn't work under Win32
b) Start / Programs / TeX Live / Help / About
	would be the natural place for Windows
		users to expect to be able to
			find the version number.

Neither of these demonstrate a /need/ for this
functionality, but that was never my claim :
I simply asserted that it would be useful,
a claim to which I still stick.

** Phil.