[texhax] TeXLive and fpTeX...

[Alan A. Dunwell]

Date sent:      	Tue, 25 Jan 2005 18:48:08 -0500
From:           	karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Subject:        	Re: [texhax] TeXLive and fpTeX...
To:             	DUNWELL at jila.colorado.edu
Copies to:      	support at tug.org

> 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

Howdy Karl,

Thank you for the explanation. I was not in any way criticizing the 
whole TeXLive distribution, it is an amazing production from any point 
of view. I was just trying to plan our TeX related path here in our  
institute related to Windows. Given what you have explained, I will 
most likely just stay with our current version of fpTeX for now and 
wait for Fabrice's successor product or perhaps make the switch later 
on to another product. In the short term you have answered my questions 
though.

Thanks,
Alan D.