[tex-live] Status of restricted \write18 and epstopdf conversion

Norbert Preining preining at logic.at
Tue Oct 27 08:51:43 CET 2009


On Di, 27 Okt 2009, Philipp Stephani wrote:
> I think there was a time when TeX files were regarded as documents, not 
> as executable programs. Do you really want to see TeX macro viruses like 
> those in Word 95? Maybe the compilation of files in the home directory 
> and the opening of dotfiles should be disabled when openout_any=p.

Strange enough nobody complained in the last n years (not sure about the n)
where this feature was present, too ;-)

All that only came out (and that is good so) with the automatic epstopdf
conversion. But leaving that aside (we have reverted that already), all
other "features" have been present since years, and nobody complained, 
nor did we get any reports of that "virus".

So I wouldn't overestimate the problem.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining                                        Associate Professor
JAIST Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology   preining at jaist.ac.jp
Vienna University of Technology                               preining at logic.at
Debian Developer (Debian TeX Task Force)                    preining at debian.org
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