On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Lars Huttar wrote:
The other issue for me with Standalone is that the only version listed for Windows is "W32TeX". When I go to the web page for that platform, I don't see any information about what W32TeX is; just how to install it. It sounds like it's specific to 32-bit systems, and mine is 64-bit. But I suppose in that regard it's no different from TeXLive -- the executables are 32-bit but they run fine on 64-bit systems.
http://w32tex.org/ It's another distribution created by a Japanese guru for compiling binaries with Visual Studio. You don't need to install W32TeX yourself, but those binaries are used in both TeX Live and ConTeXt distribution, so you basically get the same binaries (only maybe slightly newer version with ConTeXt distribution). And yes, the binaries work fine on a 64-bit system. Since recently there are 64-bit binaries available, but I didn't manage to fix the scripts yet to fetch those binaries when applicable.
Does anybody have advice for me on other reasons for switching from TeXLive to ConTeXt Standalone, or reasons not to?
If TeX Live works for you, there is no real need to switch, but if you ever need a patch or some new functionality, it would be easier to use the latest version. Mojca