[tex-live] texdoc should always use TEXDOCS

[George N. White III]

On 3/16/07, Martin Schröder <martin at oneiros.de> wrote:

> 2007/3/16, Frank Küster <frank at kuesterei.ch>:
> > I don't know how fmtutil and these things work on windows, but I also
> > don't see how this is related to the question of maintaining Thomas'
> > tools in TeXlive.  Either they do work for both now, then it's
> > irrelevant.  Or they don't, then we should in the long run try to find a
> > unified way.  But they still continue to be somewhat
> > distribution-specific.
>
> Most of Thomas' tools are shell scripts and as such don't work on
> Windows; the Windows versions usually are complete reimplementations
> in e.g. perl.

And may use very different underlying algorithms to get decent
performance (e.g.,
fptex's shared memory kpathsea library implementation).

> LuaTeX will make this easier one day, as we will then have a lua
> interpreter on all plattforms.

Having some assurance of a common scripting language will certainly be
nice, but there will be pressure to include functionality in lua on
Windows that lua on linux can get from existing utilities.

There is a good chance that TeX on Windows will always lag behind the
*X implementations.  People who need the latest stuff but are forced
to use Windows now have the option to run linux in a VM so perhaps in
the long run Windows doesn't really have to have everything that TeX
offers.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia