Ulrich Dirr wrote:
very much about miktex myself. I was forced to switch because fptex isn't developed any further by Fabrice. I'd preferred fptex because it was more tetex like than miktex. Unfortunately I'm not a programmer and don't know how to compile successfully pdftex on a windows system. But maybe you can try to run a standalone version of pdftex on http://pdftex.sarovar.org/djgpp/ (the latest sources of pdfTeX can be found at http://pdftex.sarovar.org/src). I've attached a how-to by Thanh. When you run this version it shows you a version number which should not confuse you -- it's the same as 1.21a actually.
originally tex live was built out of tetex, fptex and gwtex currently we see these three distribitions go their own way; gwtex is much more that tetex, i.e. it ships with more tex goodies and gerbens installer provides more tools as well asn an update path; fptex has become xemtex and is now an integrated environment; the gwtex binaries are mostly similar to the ones in tetex and can be used with any web2c tree, and the same is true for the binaries that ship with xemtex; there will be places to download the win binaries soon; miktex is a option for windows users as well (unless you want to share trees etc on multiple platforms) the djgpp version works ok too but is slower btw, fabrice's (fptex) tex binaries are optimized for running mp from within tex and provide a few goodies not found in other web2c variants (the new versions of texexec & texutil will no longer depend on ini files and such and will hopefully run smoothly with miktex as well as web2c variants) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------