[texhax] TeXLive and fpTeX...

[Karl Berry]

Hi Alan,

    We have fpTeX installed here on our Win/PC machines network to match 
    out Linux/UNIX install of teTeX. I noticed that in the 2004 
    TeXLive/CTAN distribution fpTeX is no longer included. 

As previously mentioned, it's there, but sadly without an installer.
I gather Fabrice is still working on that.  If you know any Windows
developers interested in working on TeX stuff, please let me know :).

    When I went back to the 2003 distribution it was not there either.

The 2003 distribution hasn't retroactively changed!  fptex is still
there, unchanged.

    Has it been depreciated in favor of the MicTeX version of proTeXt
    and if so why?

fptex has not been deprecated.  But all we can distribute is what the
volunteers release, and the Windows installer wasn't ready -- the
binaries were the best we had.  When a complete fptex (or xemtex,
Fabrice's name for his successor project) is available, I expect the
user groups will distribute that.

protext/miktex was a bonus, available in the 2004 release for the first
time from the user groups.  We were happy that new TeX users on Windows
would at least have *something* with a relatively sane installation
procedure.

I wrote up http://tug.org/texlive/windows.html to try to explain the
(far from ideal) situation as best I knew.  Comments welcome, as always.

Best regards,
karl