With my new work computer I finally gave up on my old but working ConTeXt in TeXLive2004 and upgraded for good to the standalone distribution, run on hard disk. One of the new things I found in the Tools menu was the 'Update ConTeXt' command, so today, when I'm *not* in the middle of a urgent project, I decided to try it out. Good news: for the first time in my ConTeXting career, I managed to update my system without reinstalling the whole thing. And the very new ConTeXt version (today's?!) compiles my ever-important manuals without complaints. Somewhat bad news: without fiddling, the updating gets stuck at unzipping after downloading, because 'unzip' is not in the path and that's it then. So it is not quite on 'Windows dummy' level yet, although real close. Note, though, that the standalone distribution I use is about four weeks old, I might be complaining about something that's already fixed! How I solved it: just today, I dug out an old tool and learned that it ain't gonna work without cygwin. Installed Cygwin, dumped the tool in the bin directory - and realized, that my cygwin/bin also contained a file called 'unzip.exe'. Putting it (cygwin/bin) into my Windows path didn't help (not a recommendable operation for standard users anyway), but then I realized that 'standalone' really is standalone and copied 'unzip.exe' to where my ctxtools.bat lives, i.e. \ConText\usr\local\context\tex\texmf-mswin\bin - and presto, the update went through. It seems to me that it even generates formats on the fly, so with one mouse-click I can get the most up-to-date ConTeXt. How I think this might be solved: In the texmf-mswin\bin directory, there is a 'gunzip.exe'. If I remember correctly, gunzip is fairly simple to use, so this might just mean a change somewhere in the stand-alone package so update would use gunzip to unpack the update files. Or, as it seems to me that different types of 'unzip.exe's are public domain stuff, just include that in the standalone distribution and everything works (no other changes were needed, just bringing 'unzip.exe' into the correct directory. I really like the standalone distribution. Of the many ConTeXt variations I've used until today's date, this year's standalone has been the most Windows-minded and most Windows-friendly in many ways. It works out-of-the-box (has less options to uncheck than Word), seems to live happily even under C:\Program Files and has a logic that I as a non-programming Windows power user find easy to follow. I no longer need to refer to the manual to get as far as to compile a test pdf with standard postscript fonts, now I can concentrate on the layout, not the innards of TeX. So, even though there are slight blemishes and wrinkles to be ironed out like this update thing, ConTeXt in Windows is definitely becoming a nice package for those of us who find that Word just doesn't do what we want. :-) Mari
Mari Voipio wrote:
Or, as it seems to me that different types of 'unzip.exe's are public domain stuff, just include that in the standalone distribution and everything works (no other changes were needed, just bringing 'unzip.exe' into the correct directory.
...\usr\local\context\goodies\bin has unzip (it' snot a bad idea to have the gnu bin utils someplace on disk) 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Hans Hagen wrote:
...\usr\local\context\goodies\bin
has unzip
Not in my Windows standalone distros. :-( The one at work is about a month old, the one at home just a week old, my older CD version is from April, but it's the same with all of them: in ../usr/local/context/ the folders goodies, gs, perl, ruby and xmlib are empty. Ergo, the stand-alone for Windows doesn't seem to contain unzip.exe and thus the excellent context update feature won't work without fiddling. [I know, I know, I'm being a pain in the *. But the standalone is so close to being accessible to the fairly average Windows user and still so far in these little things...] Mari (who *has* to stick with Windows at work anyway)
participants (2)
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Hans Hagen
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Mari Voipio